What causes hearing loss in children?

If children experience hearing loss, parents should take them to a regular hospital for a check-up to determine whether it is due to otitis media, or whether there are problems with the throat or sinusitis that may also affect the ears.

1. Babies have relatively complete hearing one month after birth. At this stage, they should not be exposed to loud sound stimulation. Excessive stimulation can cause hearing damage. When bathing or washing your child's hair, be careful not to let dirty water enter the ear canal to prevent external ear and otitis media. Attention should be paid to the correct posture for feeding milk and water, that is, hold the baby up and put him in a semi-recumbent position. If the breast milk is too abundant and the pressure is too great, the baby's head can be lowered slightly. This can prevent milk from choking or swallowing too late and accidentally entering the Eustachian tube, causing acute otitis media.

2. Among the various causes of hearing loss, otitis media is the most common. For example, acute otitis media is usually caused by Eustachian tube infection. Usually when you have a cold, the nasal mucosa becomes inflamed, and active bacteria will enter the middle ear directly from the Eustachian tube opening in the nasopharynx, causing inflammation of the middle ear mucosa. This situation is particularly common in children. Because the Eustachian tube of adults is narrow, curved and long, while that of infants and young children is short, relatively thick and horizontal, bacteria from the nasal cavity and nasopharynx can easily invade, causing acute otitis media or even acute suppurative otitis media and affecting hearing. There is also another type of non-suppurative otitis media called secretory otitis media, which is also an increasingly common disease. It usually occurs more frequently in winter and spring. It is characterized by the accumulation of fluid in the middle ear cavity. Most people currently believe that this disease is related to Eustachian tube dysfunction, the body's immune function, and upper respiratory tract infection. Some children with this disease suddenly develop it after a cold, while others develop it unknowingly. It is often characterized by stuffy ears and hearing loss. A few children report mild ear pain. Children often show slow listening, mishearing or inattention, turning up the TV volume very high, and poor academic performance. Because the clinical symptoms are atypical, they are easily ignored by parents, resulting in varying degrees of hearing loss in children or lifelong hearing loss.

3. The middle ear is often threatened by its "neighbors", such as diseases of the nose and pharynx, including sinusitis, tonsillitis, adenitis, etc., which often lead to otitis media. Therefore, in order to protect the health of the middle ear, it is also necessary to pay attention to correcting this type of disease. There are many such cases in clinical practice. After removing the children's enlarged and recurrent tonsils, not only did they have fewer chances of catching a cold, but their recurrent otitis media also healed.