Now hear this: Don’t ignore sudden hearing loss | Harvard Health Publishing Harvard Medical School
Everyone’s hearing naturally declines with age, and people often have one ear that hears better than the other. But if hearing loss appears suddenly in one ear for no apparent reason, you may have experienced sudden sensorineural hearing loss, or SHL, a kind of nerve deafness.
There are about 66,000 new cases of SHL per year in the United States, according to research in the August 2019 issue of Otolaryngology — Head and Neck Surgery. But these numbers are hard to come by, since the condition may be underdiagnosed.