Deaf Awareness Week

Welcome back to the Peter Byrom Audiology Blog. This week we are celebrating Deaf Awareness Week.

First of all, let’s take a look at some key facts and figures.

The numbers

Hearing loss is often linked to old age, but the numbers may surprise you. In the UK there are 12 million adults with mild to severe hearing loss, which equates to 1 in 5 adults¹ so chances are you know someone who is affected.

The RNID estimates that by 2035 this will rise to around 14.2 million adults with hearing loss^2.

Of these, more than 40% of people over 50 years old have hearing loss, rising to more than 70% of people over the age of 70³.

On top of this, there are also at least 50,000 children who are deaf in the UK⁴.

The numbers are huge, but there is still a real apathy when it comes to making an appointment with an audiologist. Whether it is due to fear or worry that hearing aids are unsightly, around 6.7 million people could benefit from hearing aids but only about 2 million people use them⁵.

What can we do to raise awareness?

Recently there has been more media attention around hearing loss after Rose Ayling-Ellis, competed in and won Strictly Come Dancing last year. The way she felt the vibrations of the music and built a fantastic relationship with her partner, Giovanni, showed us that hearing loss shouldn’t hold anyone back. If you didn’t catch Rose’s performances, then there was one that really stood out:

This broke so many barriers for those with hearing loss, old and young and I have had so many discussions with my patients about her amazing performances.

What about hearing aids?

Aside from there being fantastic role models for those with hearing loss, it is worth remembering that technology itself has changed so much. Gone are the days when you had to wear a ‘beige banana’! Hearing aids are now truly covetable – fully wireless so you can connect to your phone hands free, listen to music, use navigation apps, translation apps and so much more. Technology has come on so far that I have even had partners of my patients wanting them and they don’t have hearing loss! Some are even completely invisible, such as the Lyric.

What else should we think about?

This Deaf Awareness Week, let’s also consider something else many of us live with every day: tinnitus. In fact, there are 7.1 million adults in the UK living with tinnitus⁶. Tinnitus is not always related to hearing loss but can be.

At Peter Byrom Audiology we help treat a number of hearing-related matters from tinnitus to hearing aids, from balance to noise-induced hearing loss.

If you are at the beginning of your journey though, a good place to start can be doing a quick hearing check. You can do so online by following this link:

https://hearing-screener.beyondhearing.org/peterbyrom/QWzehn/welcome

As always, if there is anything I can help you with, please get in touch.

Take care,

Peter

References

1-3 ONS Statistics 2018 data, RNID.org.uk

4 CRIDE reports 2019, RNID.org.uk

5 Hearing Link, BAAaudiology.org

6 The British Tinnitus Association 2019, RNIID.org.uk