Continued Hearing Trouble

Posted by kshaysco @kshaysco, Jul 31, 2021

My 7 year old daughter just recently had a full hearing test done by an audiologist. Her results come back as 100% normal. A small amount of wax was removed from her ears, but not enough to be causing hearing loss. However, she still asks for things to be repeated or doesn't understand what she is hearing. Is there something we are missing?

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Did the audiologist tell you anything about auditory processing disorder? Here is a link that has information about APD. https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/central-auditory.html

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@kshaysco Another thought that comes to mind is Hidden Hearing Loss. It sounds exactly like what you described. People complain about having trouble hearing, but their audiogram show a normal response. I think the Hidden Hearing Loss is associated with not hearing with background noise, but I'm not certain it that's the only case. Is there background noise when your daughter complains about not understanding?
Tony in Michigan

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@julieo4

Did the audiologist tell you anything about auditory processing disorder? Here is a link that has information about APD. https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/central-auditory.html

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Thank you for this info. She did not mention this. I will look into it.

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@tonyinmi

@kshaysco Another thought that comes to mind is Hidden Hearing Loss. It sounds exactly like what you described. People complain about having trouble hearing, but their audiogram show a normal response. I think the Hidden Hearing Loss is associated with not hearing with background noise, but I'm not certain it that's the only case. Is there background noise when your daughter complains about not understanding?
Tony in Michigan

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I have not heard of this before. I will definitely do a little searching. It does seem to be more of a problem when there is background noise. Thank you!

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Some of us can hear (somewhat), but cannot discriminate, so cannot understand lots of speech. That means we test far better than we function in the real world. It's not because we don't try to understand; it's that the individual words are not distinct, so we're always guessing about what we think we heard. I have Meniere's, which has known complications of discrimination and, in addition, recruitment where some sounds are far louder than reality, cancelling out what you want to hear--but there are other types of hearing loss that also have diminished discrimination. There's no way, in a soundproof booth with headphones, that background noise is an issue, so some of us can test with a far better score than the way we function. Hearing is far, far more difficult to evaluate than vision! There is no test that proves how loud the tinnitus is, or even if there is any. Nothing is cut and dried: 80% of those told they have Meniere's actually have something else, for example. I'm always envious of the fact that my diabetic husband can simply check his receiver and KNOW exactly what his blood sugar actually is...no guessing at all. It also shows him how it's trending (rising or falling). Now, if we just that something like that for hearing....

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Another question: Did the audiologist use speech sentences in the testing or only pure tone testing? If speech understanding the the issue she appears to have, pure tones, which are often used when testing kids, would not present the whole picture.

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