Types of Hearing Loss in Children

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 To experience what your child may be hearing, try blocking your ears to mimic a conductive hearing loss. Sounds from outside are softer, but 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	Normal aging process Too much loud noise Heredity/genetics Head injury Certain medications (cause damage to inner-ear hair cells)	Mild to profound hearing loss Your child may struggle to hear normal sounds, or complain that speech sounds soft or mumbled. In the most severe case (profound deafness) they may not hear anything at all
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 ear	Too much loud noise Heredity/genetics Head injury	Your child will have difficulty hearing in noisy places and may have trouble determining where sound is coming from