% Hearing Loss

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C-NICE

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I have seen hearing loss & deafness described in % as opposed to decibels. My question is how do they come up with these percent values & what they mean in everyday life?
 
C-NICE said:
I have seen hearing loss & deafness described in % as opposed to decibels. My question is how do they come up with these percent values & what they mean in everyday life?
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The percentage numbers you see on hearing tests are speech discrimination percentage... it loosely gives you an idea of how much speech your able to understand, audiologist will usually will measure with/without hearing aids if discrimination is extremly low even with hearing aids then hearing aids won't help much.
 
jcurious said:
The percentage numbers you see on hearing tests are speech discrimination percentage... it loosely gives you an idea of how much speech your able to understand, audiologist will usually will measure with/without hearing aids if discrimination is extremly low even with hearing aids then hearing aids won't help much.
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here is an excellent article which explains why hearing loss is expressed in terms of decibels rather than percentages.
 
I think you will find hearing people relate better to % verses decibals. They can imediately understand if you say 40%, 50%, 90% verses the actual db which may be more meanful but is uselss to hearing people.
 
IndieVisible said:
I think you will find hearing people relate better to % verses decibals. They can imediately understand if you say 40%, 50%, 90% verses the actual db which may be more meanful but is uselss to hearing people.
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Lucky this is a website for deaf people.
 
instead of using inaccurate percentages, i describe my hearing loss in terms of "mild," moderate," "severe," "profound" or totally deaf. so far, i've never come across anyone who didn't understand those terms.
 
Hear Again said:
instead of using inaccurate percentages, i describe my hearing loss in terms of "mild," moderate," "severe," "profound" or totally deaf. so far, i've never come across anyone who didn't understand those terms.
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That seems more sensible, if anyone would ask.

I am just deaf. That I know of no one asks. The closest I come to that is if with my husband, once in a while some idiot will ask if I can talk.:hmm:(they ask my husband, not me)
 
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