Just talk about the problem of hearing loss. Speaking of hearing, the first thing we think of is the ear. The scientific name is the auricle, which mainly plays a role in collecting sound.From the sound transmission to the brain to receive the signal, this process is called hearing the sound, and this system is called the auditory system.Hearing loss, It means that there is a problem with the auditory system.In order to understand the cause of hearing loss, first carefully study the hearing conduction pathway.
Sound waves pass through the auricle and enter our external auditory canal. After resonance, the tympanic membrane transmits the sound to the auditory ossicles of the middle ear to the vestibular window, then to the inner ear, the endolymph, and through the spiral organ to our auditory nerve and auditory center to receive signals. We heard the sound, which is a complete auditory route.
It can be seen that the entire outer ear + middle ear plays a role in sound conduction.As for the inner cochlea, semicircular canal, and vestibule, one of its functions is to feel the sound, which we call sensory sound.Of course, there is also the auditory nerve, which belongs to the nerve, which means that our hearing loss often involves two terms, one is conductive hearing loss.One is perceptual hearing loss.When our hearing loss occurs in the outer ear, it may be due to cerumen embolism, or it may be blocked in our ear canal for other reasons. Such a problem belongs to an outer ear problem, then it is a conductive hearing loss; then if our middle ear is out The problem is like the adhesion of the ossicular chain, or the tympanic effusion that occurs in the middle ear, which is still conductive hearing loss; if the problem occurs in the inner ear, it is like the necrosis of cochlea hair cells or cochlear malformations. It is a sensory problem, and if it occurs in the auditory nerve, auditory neuroma, or some auditory nerve transmission obstacles, it is neurological hearing loss at this time, but the latter two sensory and nerves are often difficult to separate in the test, so we Collectively referred to as sensorineural hearing loss, but some of our patients have hearing loss in conductive and mixed parts, then we call it mixed hearing loss.
