What Is Congenital Deafness?

Congenital deafness refers to deafness caused by abnormalities or genetic factors during maternal pregnancy, childbirth, and mostly sensorineural deafness. Congenital deafness can be divided into two categories: hereditary and non-hereditary. According to the type of pathology, it can be divided into three categories: conductive, sensorineural and mixed.

Basic Information

English name: congenital deafness
Visiting department: Otorhinolaryngology head and neck surgery
Multiple groups: Family history and married children of close relatives

Common locations: ear
Common causes: Genetics, drug poisoning, disease damage, birth injury, etc.
Common symptoms: Hearing impaired

Causes of congenital deafness

Hereditary factors

Parents have congenital deafness, and children are susceptible to the disease. But not all children born are deaf. Secondly, marriage between close relatives can also cause congenital deafness. In addition, those with abnormal fetal ear tissue development can also cause congenital deafness, but can be corrected by surgery to restore hearing.

2. Drug poisoning

Ototoxic drugs such as gentamicin and quinine are used by pregnant mothers. The drugs can pass through the placenta into the fetus, causing fetal seventh cranial nerve poisoning and deafness. If the mother is deeply anesthetized during pregnancy, it can also cause hearing loss in the fetus.

3. Disease damage

If a parent has a sexually transmitted disease, such as gonorrhea, syphilis, etc., it can induce congenital deafness in the child. The mother suffers from rubella and Toxoplasma infection in the third trimester of pregnancy. The virus can threaten the fetus through the placenta, causing deformities in the inner ear and deafness. Newborns weighing less than 1500 grams at birth, suffering from hyperbilirubinemia, severe suffocation during delivery, and purulent meningitis may all cause deafness.

4. Delivery process

Improper use of forceps during mother's delivery can damage the child's hearing organs.

Clinical manifestations of congenital deafness

Congenital deafness is manifested as a hearing impairment that already exists at or shortly after birth.

Congenital Deafness Examination

Comprehensive and systematic collection of medical history, detailed ear and nose examinations, strict hearing, vestibular, and eustachian tube function tests, necessary imaging and systemic examinations are the basis for diagnosis and differential diagnosis, and objective comprehensive analysis is the prerequisite .

Diagnosis of congenital deafness

The diagnosis can be made based on the etiology, clinical manifestations, and hearing tests.

Congenital deafness treatment

Treatment principle

(1) Restore or partially restore hearing loss.

(2) Try to save and use the remaining hearing.

2. Drug treatment

At present, while ruling out or treating the primary disease, drugs that can dilate the blood vessels of the inner ear, drugs that reduce blood viscosity and dissolve small blood clots, vitamin B group drugs, and energy preparations are used as soon as possible. Antibacterial and antiviral drugs can also be applied if necessary. And steroid hormones. Hearing aids can be used for those who do not respond to medication.

3. Hearing Aid

Generally, it needs to be carefully checked by an otologist or an audiologist before it can be used properly. Anyone who has an average hearing loss of 35-80dB can use it; a hearing loss of about 60dB works best. Unilateral hearing loss is generally not required. For both deaf people, if the degree of loss of both ears is roughly the same, you can use binaural hearing aids or rotate the single ear hearing aids to the left and right ears. If the hearing loss of the two ears differs greatly, but both do not exceed 50dB, hearing For poor ears, if one ear has a hearing loss of more than 50dB, it should be worn for the ear with better hearing. In addition, the characteristics of hearing impairment should also be considered. For example, hearing aids should now be used for ears with high speech recognition rate, flat hearing curve, large air-bone conduction gap or wide dynamic hearing range. Air conduction and bone conduction hearing aids for conductive deaf are available. Bone conduction hearing aids are recommended for those with narrow external auditory canal or chronic inflammation. Hearing aids with automatic gain control are required for those with sensorineural hearing loss and revitalization. Hearing aids are available for those with refractive errors. Behind-the-ear or in-the-ear hearing aids should be selected according to the patient's requirements and deafness. Those who are new to hearing aids must go through the process of debugging and adaptation, otherwise it will be difficult to obtain satisfactory results.

4. Cochlear implant

Cochlear implants are also called electronic cochlea or cochlear implant. Commonly used for mentally and mentally healthy young and middle-aged young people who are extremely deaf after learning. It must be that high-power hearing aids are ineffective, there are no active lesions in the ears, imaging examinations prove that the inner ear structure is normal, cochlear electrograms can not be detected, but the electrical stimulation of the drum head or worm window can induce brain stem responses. The electronic cochlea is based on the fact that most of the cochlear spiral nerve fibers and ganglion cells of the sensorineural deaf are still alive. Microelectrodes connected to the external electroacoustic transducer are inserted into the cochlea base drum stage or pasted through the worm window Attached to the outer bone wall of the cochlea, it is used to directly stimulate nerve endings and transmit simulated auditory information to the center in order to make the deaf people perceive the sound again. With speech training, some speech functions can be restored.

5. Hearing and speech training

The former uses hearing aids to make use of deaf people's residual hearing, and through long-term planned sound stimulation, gradually develops their listening habits and improves their ability to perceive, listen to, listen to, locate, recognize, and memorize. Speech training is based on the complementary functions of hearing, vision, and touch. With appropriate instruments (audio indicators, speech instruments, etc.), deaf children are trained with scientific teaching methods to sound, read lips, and then understand and accumulate vocabulary. Flexible and accurate expression of thoughts and feelings. Occurrence training includes breathing methods, lip and tongue movements, noise use, and training of phonemes, tones, and intonation. Hearing and speech training complement each other, promote each other, and should not be partial. They should be started as early as possible and interspersed. If family members and teachers can cooperate closely and persevere, they will certainly achieve the goal of being deaf but not dumb.