Hello and welcome to the Zero to Finals podcast.

My name is Tom and in this episode I'm going to be talking to you about hearing loss.

And you can find written notes on this topic at zero definals.com

slash hearing loss or in the ear, nose and throat section of the Zero-definals surgery book. So let's get straight

into it. There are two main categories of hearing loss, conductive hearing loss and sensory

neural hearing loss. Conductive hearing loss relates to a problem with sound traveling from the

environment into the inner ear.

The sensory system may be working correctly, but the sound is not reaching the sensory system.

An example of how you can create conductive hearing loss is to put ear plugs into your ear.

The sound can't reach the inner ear because the ear plugs are in the way.

Sensory neural hearing loss is caused by a problem with the sensory system or the vestibular

cochlear nerve in the inner ear. The sound is reaching the inner ear but it can't be sensed

properly or transmitted to the brain properly.

Let's talk about some basic ear anatomy. There are three sections to the ear, and they're the

outer ear, the middle ear, and the inner ear. The basic structures from the outside in are the

pinner, which is the external portion of the ear,

the external auditory canal, which is the tube into the ear, the tympanic membrane, which is the

eardrum, the eustacean tube, which connects the middle ear to the throat to equalize the pressure

in the middle ear, the malleus, incus and stapies are the small

bones in the middle ear that connect the tympanic membrane to the structures of the inner ear.

The semicircular canals are responsible for sensing head movement, and this is the vestibular system.

The cochlear is responsible for converting

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