[Sensorineural hearing loss in diabetes. Prosthetic care in hearing impaired patients]

Sensorineural hearing loss is more common in patients with diabetes than in the control nondiabetic patients, and severity of hearing loss seemed to correlate with progression of disease. This may be due to microangiopathic disease in the inner ear. References for diabetic microangiopathy are presented. Sensorineural hearing loss can often be helped by hearing aids. During the last decade there have been significant developments in hearing aid technology. Progress began with the presentation of programmable hearing aids in the late 1980's. The first hearing aids with fully digital signal processing became commercially available in 1995. The hearing aid is programmable, which means that it can be adjusted individually by a hearing healthcare professional (hearing aid fitting at departments of phoniatrics and of audiology in our country). The article gives an outline of indications for hearing aids.