Photo credit: SHVETS production
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
“Why do I hear but not understand?” That is the title of one of the references in a recent article in Scientific Reports, published by the Nature publishing group in the United Kingdom. The article’s title is: “Impaired noise adaptation contributes to speech intelligibility problems in people with hearing loss.”
Speech-in-noise difficulty is the term used to describe the difficulty people have following one conversation among many in a noisy environment. This is especially a problem in restaurants or at parties. It is common in middle-aged to older adults, although the reported prevalence varies widely. It is also called hidden hearing loss, because the patient complains about the problem but the audiogram is normal. Two good articles about this issue are one by Pienkowski and another by Guo and Kujawa. One of the important points Pienkowski makes is that what is defined as a normal audiogram allows a 15 decibel decrement in hearing, but truly normal hearing is a 0 decibel decrement. The 15 decibel decrement is sufficient to cause difficulty understanding speech in a noisy environment.
The new research adds more information as to why people with hearing loss can’t understand speech. I don’t understand the research methods, but all research is good. No more research is needed, however, to know without a doubt that noise damages hearing, and unless one’s hearing is protected, one will likely experience speech-in-noise difficulty in later years.
Preventing auditory damage is easy and inexpensive. Avoid loud noise exposure, turn down the volume, leave the noisy environment or use hearing protection and one’s ears should last a lifetime.
