Hereditary Hearing Loss

In the past few years, new genetic techniques have been used successfully to locate and characterize genes for several types of hereditary hearing loss. The effects of this new knowledge on clinical practice and the lives of people with hearing loss will be far-reaching and controversial. Hearing loss affects an estimated 28 million people in the United States. Hereditary factors account for a considerable proportion of all cases of hearing loss. There are over 200 types of hereditary hearing loss,1 approximately one third of which are associated with other medical, physical, or developmental abnormalities (known as syndromic hearing loss). For . . .