Types of hearing loss

Conductive hearing loss
What’s wrong	Causes	Amount of hearing loss
Parts in the outer ear and/or middle ear (eardrum and 3 bones) don’t work properly	Middle ear infections Head injury Birth defects Disease such as otosclerosis	Mild to moderate hearing loss Putting your fingers in your ears mimics conductive hearing loss (sounds from outside your ear are softer; your own voice may sound louder)
Sensorineural hearing loss*
What’s wrong	Causes	Amount of hearing loss
Parts in the inner ear (cochlea and hair cells) don’t work properly	Too much loud noise Heredity/genetics Head injury Certain medications (cause damage to inner-ear hair cells) Normal aging process (adults only)	Mild to profound hearing loss Sounds are not only softer, but may seem muffled or garbled; harder to separate one sound from another and interpret meaning of speech and sounds
Neural hearing loss*
Hearing nerve doesn’t work properly	Heredity / genetics Head injury Tumor	Mild to profound hearing loss Sounds are not only softer, but may seem muffled or garbled; harder to separate one sound from another and interpret meaning of speech and sounds
Mixed hearing loss
What’s wrong	Causes	Amount of hearing loss
A combination of conductive and sensorineural hearing loss	Combination of conductive and sensory causes	Mild to profound hearing loss
Single Sided Deafness (SSD)
What’s wrong	Causes	Amount of hearing loss
Profound sensorineural hearing loss in one ear only. Normal hearing from the other ea	Heredity/genetics Head injury Very loud noise in one ear Tumor removal (surgery) Acoustic neuroma removal (surgery)	You will have difficulty hearing in noisy places and may have trouble determining where sound is coming from

* It can be difficult to diagnosis the difference between sensory and neural hearing loss, so sometimes people call these categories “sensorineural hearing loss” because it’s either sensory or neural.