Our auditory system is complex and vulnerable and problems with it don’t always yield up an explanation. This is especially true whe we seek to know the sensorineural hearing loss causes in children.
Life’s circumstances can and do play a role of course in the sensorineural hearing loss causes in children. There are children born with normal hearing, who develop sensorineural hearing loss after birth. usually this is a result of a significant illness. Children born with inherited diaphragmatic hernia are known to be at extremely high risk for development of sensorineural hearing loss.additional risk factors include significantly higher than normal bilirubin levels, true especially for those requiring management with poor apgar scores at birth,an exchange transfusion, and exposure to some medications .
Children with respiratory problems after birth that require life-saving measures such as several weeks or more of a mechanical or oscillating ventilator or out of body oxygenation have been found to have an increased likelihood of developing hearing loss months to years after being sent home from the hospital.
These risk factors are not necessarily the cause of the hearing loss, but do occur in very sick newborns who may be at risk to suffer damage to their delicate inner ear or hearing for reasons that are not completely understood.
It is helpful to monitor the hearing of children who have risk factors at birth, best to do even if they pass a newborn hearing test. Repeated testing is prudentlyy recommended every half year for several years in order to be on the lookout for the onset of a delay in sensorineural hearing loss.
Bacterial meningitis can cause children and adults to develop sensorineural hearing loss secondarily. . Complete or partial hearing loss may occur after the meningitis event. Deaf children are treated with cochlear implant and those with hearing impairment are monitored over time, as progressive hearing loss may occur, years later.
A blow to the head type of major trauma causing a fracture or severe concussion or a fracture to the part of the skull that protecting the ear can be responsible for sensorineural hearing loss. Exposure to very loud sounds, in particular over a long period of time, is the kind of assault to the hearing system that can also be the cause of sensorineural hearing loss.
Certain medications are known to have the potential to cause hearing loss. Sometimes these medications must still be used because they may be the best treatment for a serious infection or cancer.
Genetics play a major role in at birth hearing loss. Sensorineural is the largest type grouping of children who suffer hearing loss at birth. Furthermore,fully half of the sensorineural hearing loss in children occurs on a hereditary basis ( is congenital). By a large majority, in fact 9 out of 10 of those children who are afflicted with sensorineural hearing loss are the children of two parents with normal hearing. This confounds some especially those outside the scientific community due to the fact that the odds stacked so heavily in favor of those suffering the condition to be doing so as a result of genetics. This apparent contradiction is explained by the fact that the majority of the genes for sensorineural hearing loss are recessive, a complicated matter of alleles which was first identified by renowned 19 th century scientist and early geneticist Gregor Mendal. Parents with a single recessive gene for hearing loss have normal hearing themselves because they also carry another unaffected gene.
However, in the case of each hearing parent having one gene for hearing loss as well as a gene for normal hearing, their child may acquire two genes for hearing loss one coming from each of the child’s parents. Most children with hereditary or genetic sensorineural hearing loss fortunately are born healthy. These children have what is called non-syndromic sensorineural hearing loss. A single gene has been identified as being responsible for more than one half of the instances of the condition. The lesser number of the children have a syndrome in which their hearing loss is the result of another physical finding or medical problem. A few of the several syndromes that are associated with sensorineural hearing loss that occur congenitally.
Additionally sensorineural hearing loss can be present at birth due to the fact that the mother experienced certain types of infections during pregnancy, famong those are syphillis, rubella(german measles), cytomegalovirus and toxoplasmosis.
Of the estimated fifty percent of cases of sensorineural hearing loss present at birth that do not occur genetically there is no identifiable cause that can be determined for over half. This puts the total of unexplained sensorineural hearing loss causes in children afflicted at birth at approximately twenty five percent .
Hearing loss info at Journal Watch
Hearing loss info at radiographics
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