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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.
“Most likely, these are people who have already had some kind of hearing loss but have been 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.
“Eventually we would see these people, but it would be a few years before they saw doctors, not now,” said Kathryn Palmer, director of audiology at UPMC Healthcare in western Pennsylvania.
Audiologists
Audiologists explain that the lack of visual expression only makes hearing difficult, and that even plastic masks and barriers reduce the sound level, just as “Covid-19” makes us adhere to a social distance that makes us stay away from the person we are talking to, which is another mechanism that needs to be adapted.
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. .
Nancy Tay Murray, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, explained that the visual image is a “powerful complement” of hearing. For example, when you are in a noisy restaurant.
Palmer noted that adults can usually fill in the blanks and find words they can’t hear, but it’s exhausting, and Lori Delia, an audiologist at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio, said one Once people are equipped with hearing aids, they realize that “a lot of this listening effort is thrown away.”
Palmer noted that masks pose another problem for those who wear hearing aids: they lose or damage hearing aids.
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