ROMA (ITALPRESS) – Deafness, or loss of hearing, is the partial or total reduction of the ability to perceive sounds that normally a person with normal hearing could hear. Alteration may concern one or both ears and may have different degrees: mild, moderate, severe, until the total loss of hearing. It is estimated that about 13 million Italians live with a hearing disorder in some degree: When the loss is such as to compromise communication, social participation and quality of life we talk about disability. “For deafness there are so many synonyms that go to explain how much we understand what we feel: one can hear a noise but not understand, or not hear a noise and therefore do not understand”, said Andrea Franzetti, director of the Otorinolaringoiatria operating unit at the Bassini hospital in Cinisello Balsamo, interviewed by Marco Klinger for Top Medicine, TV format of the news agency Italpress. In order to address the issue, a distinction must be made: “When we talk about hypoacusia it means that we feel little, when we talk about deafness instead it means that we understand little: they are two quite different factors. One realizes this in old age: the first thing you notice is the discomfort you feel when you try to understand something without understanding it, you feel that someone speaks without understanding everything they say; this usually happens in noisy environments like restaurants and cinemas. It is a growing phenomenon, also because it is diagnosed more: if you can understand the deafness and identify it first this allows us to better care it where, for example, at ninety years you can no longer have any effect even with an acoustic prosthesis. Living in a context exposed to so many noises affects, in particular in two aspects: harassment noises and factors that can act on the cognitive-behaviour aspect. Use too many games or in any case extremely noisy forms of fun not only damage the ear, but also the brain: if the loss or forgetfulness of a word occurs several times during the vision of a transmission can be an alarm bell”.
Franzetti then dwells on the deafness in children, who “divides himself into two great families: the genetic one, which today fortunately thanks to the obligation of a neonatal audiological screening allows to identify within the first month of life a deaf child, sending an echo in the ear and observing if there is a response to the sent stimulus; that progressive, which is more insidious and at the center of the attention of pediatricians and educators as it makes the articulation of language more tiring. Deafness can depend, from birth, on infections such as cytomegalovirus, otititis that are repeated continuously or meningitis: the latter may manifest in all ages; the more we struggle to face an infection, the more the risk of the complication of deafness is high.” As for the diagnosis, he adds, “start from the basic exams, the so-called audiometrics, up to a kind of electroencephalogram that goes to study the whole acoustic way: usually within two days there is a clear picture of the situation. Listening to music allows fine perception and concentration compared to melody, thus having a clear connection between ear and brain: even for those who are struggling to hear or are implanted one of the exercises that I recommend is this”. Franzetti’s last reflection concerns the progress made on the subject in recent times: “When I started doing the otorin, I told patients with neurosensory deafness, ‘put a prosthesis until it goes’, now they face even complex forms of deafness: has been discovered, and it is in an advanced experimental phase both in Italy and in Europe, the possibility to introduce through a virus a genetic modification for the genes that cause deafness, so the children who have already entered this phase within 8-12 months resume hearing where the nerve cell was unable to give it.”.
– photos taken from video Medicine Top –
(ITALPRESS).
