Unilateral hearing loss

Unilateral hearing loss is a type of hearing impairment in which hearing is normal in one ear and impaired in the other. People with it have difficulty hearing conversation on the affected side, locating where sounds come from, understanding speech against background noise and following individual sounds in large open spaces. Known causes include genetics, maternal illness and injury, for example trauma, acoustic neuroma, prenatal measles, labyrinthitis, meningitis, Menière disease and mumps. Its most severe form, in which one ear has no functional hearing, is called single-sided deafness. Prevalence is given as roughly 3 to 8.3 percent of the population, and children with single-sided deafness are more likely to have school, speech and behavioral difficulties.