Vivantes Hearing Center

Hearing impairment in the elderly

Hearing impairment is particularly common in the elderly. Many sufferers feel socially isolated. Conversations with family or friends, even the daily shopping routine becomes a challenge.
To find out the optimal treatment for your hearing impairment, we employ the entire hearing diagnostic spectrum if need be. Using cutting-edge implant techniques, we can treat even severe hearing disorders. Together we will find a solution for your hearing impairment. 

Special diagnostics

Our team of specialists is highly experienced in diagnosing all types of hearing disorders. We perform about 6,000 exams annually at our center.
To test your hearing we may, for example, determine tone audiometric hearing thresholds in your ear’s air and bone conduction. The range of techniques at our disposal also includes extended subjective and objective audiometry, such as speech intelligibility in quiet and noisy conditions. To analyze how the sound waves behave in your ear, we can draw on impedance audiometry, otoacoustic emission (OAE) and acoustically or electrically provoked potential measurements.
Adults are examined whilst awake, children will be anesthetized, if appropriate coupled with a CT or MRI scan.

Surgery

Our surgical team offers a wide therapeutic spectrum for all problems surrounding the ear. From the therapy of chronic inflammations of the middle ear (including cholesteatoma), revision surgery or operations to improve hearing such as tympanoplasty or stapes replacement. Special areas in this connection are implant surgery and tumor surgery.

Implant surgery

Implantable hearing aids

If you suffer from so-called “conductive deafness”, sound routing via the eardrum and auditory ossicles is disrupted. Your inner ear, however, remains intact. Here, it is possible to couple special hearing aids or implants to the cranium and cause it to vibrate. In this context, we employ the so-called BAHA (Bone Anchored Hearing Aid) system.

Cochlea implants

Conventional hearing aids amplify sound. A cochlea implant picks up sound waves–tones, noise, music or speech–and stimulates the hearing nerve via an electrode. The electrode assumes the role which is usually played by our cochlea. It feeds impulses to our brain which deciphers them just like a healthy person does, thus restoring the aural sense. In this sense, a cochlea implant really is an aural prosthesis rather than a hearing aid.
A cochlea implant is therefore suitable for people with severe hearing loss or individuals who lost their hearing after language acquisition. Even babies born deaf will benefit from a cochlea implant before they first acquire language.

Vibrant Soundbridge

If you suffer from hearing loss of the inner ear or a combined hearing impairment, Vibrant Soundbridge may be an option for you. This implant transforms ambient sound signals into vibrations which your inner ear can parse as acoustic signals.

Tumor surgery

In our tumor surgical department, we perform complex operations of the skull base e.g. to remove a neuroma of the acoustic nerve or a glomus tympanicum. This intervention takes a great deal of experience because the operating field is crossed by cranial and facial nerves. Our hearing center lets you benefit from the long-standing collaboration of our interdisciplinary team of ENT specialists, neurosurgeons, interventional radiologists, and radiotherapists.

Hearing disorders in children

Children may suffer from hearing disorders which are mostly innate. About 4 out of 1000 children have a severe hearing disorder. Detecting and treating at an early stage is critical because a functional hearing system is of the essence for language acquisition in children. It is also intimately connected to the mental and social development and later success in school and vocational training. To give your child an optimal start in life, we maintain a close cooperation with our pediatric associates.

Diagnostic and therapeutic procedures

If abnormalities are found in your child during neonatal screening, we have a broad spectrum of diagnostic techniques at our disposal which allow us to pinpoint the problem. This includes the so-called brain stem audiometry (BERA) to test neural reactions which take place when aural stimuli are processed in the brain. Audiometry to test the existing hearing capability over different frequency ranges, or tympanometry to assess eardrum motility.

Should the diagnosis of a hearing impairment be confirmed in your child, our multidisciplinary team offers a range of therapeutic options, including provision of a hearing aid or cochlea implant.

Throughout the course of the treatment you, as the child’s parents, can rely on our sympathetic and individual support. Do not hesitate to talk to us if you have any questions, for example about hearing aids. We are happy to help!