{"id":1784,"date":"2013-04-01T11:33:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-01T16:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entmidwest.fm1.dev\/?p=1784"},"modified":"2022-12-15T11:35:28","modified_gmt":"2022-12-15T17:35:28","slug":"understanding-what-we-hear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entmidwest.com\/understanding-what-we-hear\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding What We Hear"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Understanding<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Last week we learned about how to describe and categorize different type of hearing loss.&nbsp; Once the ear&nbsp;<em>hears<\/em>&nbsp;the sound, this sound is sent from the cochlea to the auditory nerve, up to the hearing centers in our brain.&nbsp; Once the sound is heard, it is up to the auditory nerve and the auditory center in the brain to&nbsp;<em>understand<\/em>&nbsp;what the ear has heard.&nbsp; This is where we use percentages.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When someone has hearing loss, we want to know how well the nerve and brain can&nbsp;<em>understand<\/em>&nbsp;speech when it is loud enough for the ear to&nbsp;<em>hear<\/em>&nbsp;it.&nbsp; So we use a scientific formula to determine at what level we need the volume to be, and then ask the patient to repeat words at this level.&nbsp; This percentage tells us how well the patient can understand speech when it is loud enough for them to hear it.&nbsp; The chart below explains the different categories of speech understanding:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td><strong>Percentage of words correct<\/strong><\/td><td><strong>Description of Understanding<\/strong><\/td><\/tr><tr><td>100%<\/td><td>Excellent<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>88-96%<\/td><td>Good<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>76-87%<\/td><td>Mild difficulty<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>60-75%<\/td><td>Moderate difficulty<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>48-59%<\/td><td>Moderately severe difficulty<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>24-47%<\/td><td>Severe difficulty<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>0-23%<\/td><td>Profound<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>So, this means that if a patient gets 65% of the words correct, they have moderate difficulty&nbsp;<em>understanding<\/em>&nbsp;speech \u2013 regardless of their&nbsp;<em>hearing<\/em>&nbsp;levels.&nbsp; Sometimes people confuse this with their percentage of hearing loss.&nbsp; But after learning about the difference, you will never make that mistake!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My next post will be about anatomy and physiology of the ear \u2013 which could help with some of the terminology used in this post.&nbsp; Hope you enjoyed learning about hearing loss!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>\u201cPositive anything is better than negative nothing.\u201d&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>\u2013 Elbert Hubbard<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Understanding Last week we learned about how to describe and categorize different type of hearing loss.&nbsp; Once the ear&nbsp;hears&nbsp;the sound, this sound is sent from the cochlea to the auditory nerve, up to the hearing centers in our brain.&nbsp; Once the sound is heard, it is up to the auditory nerve and the auditory center&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entmidwest.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1784"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entmidwest.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entmidwest.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entmidwest.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entmidwest.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1784"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/entmidwest.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1787,"href":"https:\/\/entmidwest.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1784\/revisions\/1787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entmidwest.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entmidwest.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entmidwest.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}