Presbycusis Research Paper

Presbycusis: Causes and Management Frequently, people encounter others that may have presbycusis and do not understand why the person with this impairment has difficulty hearing them. Presbycusis is not a world known impairment in individuals. Yet, even though it is often an unknown impairment, it is an important problem in society. Information on presbycusis along with its causes and different management techniques will be discussed in detail throughout this paper.

Information

According to Huang and Tang (2010), presbycusis is described as an age-related hearing loss, and is a very common sensory deficit in most of the elderly population (Huang and Tang 2010). Presbycusis is characterized by difficulty understanding speech and reduced

Presbycusis has become a severe health and social problem in the elderly population. People that suffer from presbycusis have a high pitch hearing loss, which has a major effect on communication, particularly noisy situations and very reverberant rooms, such as, restaurants. If the loss progresses to the 2000 to 4000 Hertz range, understanding speech in any situation will be affected. The 2000 to 4000 Hertz range is very important because it can affect the vowel identification, voiceless consonants, and basically speech understanding in any environment (Huang and Tang, 2010). The ability to identify, detect and localize sound is affected, which is an important skill for associating with other people. Some of the older populations will say: "I can hear you, but I can not understand you" (Huang and Tang, 2010). Understanding high frequency sounds, such as, fire alarms, turn signals, and alarms on firetrucks and police cars can be a major problem. Even minor errors in words can make communication difficult and

C57, a calcium- binding protein found primarily in the hair cell, is said to contribute to the development of hearing loss from a genetic perspective (Ko, 2010).

Presbycusis does tend to appear within families, and genetics does seem to play a role, aging and environmental influences are still the primary source of presbycusis. So now that the cause of presbycusis is determined it is important to learn how to manage it.