Unilateral Hearing Loss

What is it? Unilateral hearing loss occurs when there is normal hearing in one ear, and hearing impairment in the other ear. Persons with this type of hearing impairment may find it more difficult to locate from what direction sound is coming, listening on the impaired side, and understanding in noisy backgrounds. However, if the conditions are favorable and the environment is quiet, many with unilateral loss will understand speech almost as well as those with normal hearing. Causes and Treatment Unilateral losses can be caused by head injury, acoustic tumors, birth defects, recurrent ear infections, and various disease processes, including measles, mumps, meningitis, and Menieres disease. Treatment varies based on the severity of the loss from use of communication strategies, hearing aids, or cochlear implants. Special types of hearing aids may be implemented depending on the location of the damage or dysfunction causing the impairment. For those with sensorineural unilateral hearing impairment, a contralateral routing of signals (CROS) hearing aid

may be used. Two hearing aids are worn. One is worn on the bad ear that picks up the signals and transmits/routes the sound to the better ear. This helps the listener in situations where people are speaking on their bad side. It may also aid in localizing the source of the sound. Bone conduction hearing aids (BAHA) may also be used if the hearing impairment has a conductive component. Sound is transferred to the better ear by vibration of the skull.

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