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Recent reports have said that the face masks we wear to protect ourselves and others from “Covid-19” have helped reveal a new health problem facing those who suffer from hearing problems.
Reports indicate that audiologists in the United States have noticed a slight increase in patient visits who realized their addiction to lip reading and facial expressions after people began wearing masks that cover their noses and mouths.
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“Most likely, these are people who have experienced some kind of hearing loss before, but were able to cope,” said Andrea Gomert, director of the Hearing Aid Clinic at the University of Texas at the Callier Center for Communication Disorders in Dallas.
Most of the time, hearing loss occurs gradually, and people often wait around seven years to get a hearing test, according to audiologists, the specialists who evaluate hearing.
“We would have seen these people eventually, but it would be a few years before they saw the doctors, not now,” said Kathryn Palmer, director of audiology at UPMC Healthcare in western Pennsylvania.
Audiologists explain that the lack of visual expression only makes hearing difficult and that plastic masks and barriers also reduce the level of sound, just as “Covid-19” makes us adhere to a social distancing that makes us feel. away from the person we are talking to, which is another mechanism that should adapt.
Palmer, who just finished his term as president of the American Academy of Audiology, said people with normal hearing can check to see if sounds are slightly muffled, but those with some hearing loss face a much more difficult time. .
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The visual image is a “powerful complement” to hearing, said Nancy Tay-Murray, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis.
“Most hearing impaired people don’t realize they are very dependent on the image, and people with normal hearing also depend on it, for example when in a noisy restaurant,” he added.
Palmer noted that adults can usually fill in the blanks and find words they can’t hear, but it’s exhausting.
Once hearing aids are provided, people realize that “much of this listening effort is wasted,” said Laurie Delia, an audiologist at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio.
Palmer noted that masks pose another problem for those who wear hearing aids: they lose or damage hearing aids.
Source: Fox News
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