Hearing Loss Archive

A new medication called dupilumab (Dupixent) may help reduce nasal polyps in people with recurring polyps and chronic sinusitis.

What Is It?

Endoscopy describes many procedures that look inside the body using some type of endoscope, a flexible tube with a small TV camera and a light on one end and an eyepiece on the other. The endoscope allows doctors to examine the inside of certain tube-like structures in the body. Many endoscopes transmit the doctor's view to a video screen. Most endoscopes have attachments that permit doctors to take fluid or tissue samples for laboratory testing.

Upper endoscopy allows a doctor to see inside the esophagus, stomach and top parts of the small intestine. Bronchoscopy examines the large airways inside the lungs (bronchi). Sigmoidoscopy and colonoscopy examine different parts of the lower digestive tract. Each type of endoscopy uses a slightly different endoscope with a different name — an upper endoscope for upper endoscopy, a bronchoscope for bronchoscopy, a sigmoidoscope for sigmoidoscopy and a colonoscope for colonoscopy. Other endoscopes allow doctors to see inside the abdomen and inside joints through small incisions.

What is the test?

A throat infection with streptococcus bacteria (called strep throat) needs to be treated with an antibiotic. A test is commonly used to find out whether streptococcus bacteria are present on your throat surface. The traditional test for a strep throat has been a throat culture, which takes two to three days to produce results. Several different types of rapid strep tests, however, can produce results within minutes to hours. A rapid strep test can only detect the presence of Group A strep, the one most likely to cause serious throat infections; it does not detect other kinds of strep or other bacteria.

How do I prepare for the test?

No preparation is necessary.

What happens when the test is performed?

A cotton swab is rubbed against the back of your throat to gather a sample of mucus. This takes only a second or two and makes some people feel a brief gagging or choking sensation. The mucus sample is then tested for a protein that comes from the strep bacteria.

What is the test?

A throat infection with streptococcus bacteria (called strep throat) needs to be treated with an antibiotic. A throat culture is the traditional test used for identifying streptococcus bacteria on your throat surface. Throat cultures also can identify some other bacteria that can cause sore throat.

How do I prepare for the test?

No preparation is necessary.

What happens when the test is performed?

A cotton swab is rubbed against the back of your throat to gather a sample of mucus. This takes only a second or two and makes some people feel a brief gagging or choking sensation. The mucus sample is then placed on a culture plate that helps any bacteria present in the mucus grow, so they can be examined and identified.

If you’re like most people with hearing loss, you’ll probably find that it takes time to accept the idea that you need a hearing aid, and you may be unhappy when your audiologist recommends that you get not one, but two. Chances are that your first question will be, “Is it normal to get two hearing aids?” And then, “Do I really need two?”

If you have hearing loss in only one ear and normal or nearly normal hearing in the other, then one hearing aid is all you need. But most people have hearing loss in both ears, especially if the loss is age-related. (You may have one ear that’s better than the other, but chances are both will be in the same ballpark.) In that case, research and experience suggest that you’ll ultimately be more satis­fied with two hearing aids.

You have a brief window to seek treatment.

Everyone's hearing naturally declines with age, and people often have one ear that hears better than the other. But if hearing loss appears suddenly in one ear for no apparent reason, you may have experienced sudden sensorineural hearing loss, or SHL, a kind of nerve deafness.

There are about 66,000 new cases of SHL per year in the United States, according to research in the August 2019 issue of Otolaryngology — Head and Neck Surgery. But these numbers are hard to come by, since the condition may be underdiagnosed.

In the journals

Previous studies have shown a link between loss of smell among older adults and risk of death within a short period — often five years or less. Now, a report published online May 21, 2019, by Annals of Internal Medicine confirmed this increased risk of death over more than a decade, as well as identifying the leading causes of death.

Researchers gave smell identification tests to 2,289 adults ages 71 to 82 (about half of whom were men). They found that those who scored low on the smell test had a 46% higher risk of dying within 10 years, and 30% within 13 years, compared with those who had a stronger sense of smell.

New research aims to capture and eventually cure incessant ringing in the ears.

More than 50 million Americans struggle with tinnitus, a constant or recurring ringing in the ears that ranges from irritating to debilitating. Some treatments work for some people, but none seems to work for everyone.

Tinnitus is a tough condition for doctors to study. "There's no way to measure it directly. The only way we know you have tinnitus is if you tell us. Even if there were a cure, we wouldn't know how it worked because we have to rely on verbal descriptions of what your tinnitus sounds like and how loud it is," says Daniel Polley, director of the Lauer Tinnitus Research Center at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts Eye and Ear.