BACKGROUND Vision and hearing impairments in the elderly (aged over 80 years) and poor indoor lighting conditions in a home-care setting are risk factors for functional decline, reduced social participation, withdrawal, and accidents. OBJECTIVE We aimed to evaluate the changes in vision, hearing, and lighting conditions in the homes of participants aged over 80 years after implementation of a...

Congenital anomaly of the oval window with an abnormal facial nerve course is an uncommon embryological defect, which is related to the underdevelopment of second branchial arch derivatives. Some treatments for improving hearing levels are available; these include hearing aids, vestibulotomy, neo-oval window formation, and stapes surgeries, including incudostapedotomy and malleostapedotomy. How...

The recent article on ‘‘Hearing loss in congenital Zika virus’’ is very interesting.1 Leal et al. reported an interesting case of sensorineural hearing loss in a case of congenital Zika virus.1 In fact, it is no doubt that Zika virus can induce teratogenic effect and the main pathology is on the fetal neurological system. However, the myth is the exact mechanism underlying the hearing loss in t...

Service dogs help persons with mobility impairments by retrieving items and performing other tasks. Hearing dogs alert persons with hearing impairments to environmental sounds. We conducted a pre-post, wait list-controlled pilot study to assess the impact of the dogs on the lives of recipients. Participants were recruited through two assistance dog training organizations and completed an initia...

Time can be observed as a subjective, as well as an objective phenomenon which is a component of our life, and due to its communicational needs, it is standardized by temporal signs and symbols. The aim of this study was to determine the understanding of basic temporal relations of pupils with hearing impairments. We assumed that the knowledge of basic time relations is a precondition for the a...

This descriptive, longitudinal study involved the analysis of the prosody and voice characteristics of conversational speech produced by six young children with severe to profound hearing impairments who had been fitted with cochlear implants. A total of 40 samples were analyzed using the Prosody-Voice Screening Profile (PVSP; Shriberg, L. D., Kwiatkowski, J., & Rasmussen, C. (1990). Prosody-Vo...

Objectives: Auditory perception or hearing ability is critical for children in acquisition of language and speech; hence hearing loss has different effects on individuals’ linguistic perception, and also on their functions. It seems that deaf people suffer from language and speech impairments such as in perception of complex linguistic constructions. This research was aimed to study the percept...

Hereditary hearing loss (HHL) comprises half of the congenital deafness which arises from genetic mutations. Mutations in the TJP2 gene, encoding tight junction protein 2, are one of the gene alterations in HHL resulting in an autosomal dominant nonsyndromic form of the disease. An 11-year-old male patient with clinically approved congenital hearing loss was referred to our laboratory....

Following the positive outcomes of the newborn hearing screening programmes already underway in several Italian regions, it is now necessary to address the identification of childhood hearing impairments that missed the neonatal screening programme or have delayed onset. Within the framework of the Ministry of Health project CCM 2013 "Preventing Communication Disorders: a Regional Program for e...