Hearing Loss Basics 2019-03-09T15:50:49+00:00

Understand the basics of hearing loss in RTD

To understand ANSD, it’s helpful to review how the ear hears. Hearing begins when sound waves that travel through the air reach the outer ear, or pinna (the part of the ear that’s visible). The sound waves go through the ear canal into the middle ear, which includes the eardrum (a thin layer of tissue) and three tiny bones called ossicles. The sound causes the eardrum to vibrate and the ossicles amplify these vibrations and carry them to the inner ear.


Hearing loss in approximately 85-90% of individuals in the general population is the result of damage to damage to their outer hair cells.  With RTD, however, the outer hair cells do not appear to be affected and function normally.  For someone with a hearing impairment resulting from RTD, sound enters the ear normally, but because of damage at some point after the outer hairs cells, that sound isn’t properly transmitted from the inner ear to the brain.

As a result, the sound that arrives at the brain isn’t organized in a way that the brain can understand. Some individuals with RTD are able to hear sound but have difficulties understand speech, especially in noisy situations.  For others, all sounds may seem the same, like static or white noise, or they may not hear any sounds at all even with hearing aids.