Obvs, the hearing test revealed that my inner ear worked GREAT. There was just no way for sound to reach it, b/c of the lack of ear canal. This kind of deafness is called conductive hearing loss (sound waves are obstructed from reaching the inner ear) due to aural atresia (lack of adequate ear canal).
The solution is a bone-anchored hearing aid (BAHA) which bypasses the lack of ear canal and conducts sound vibrations directly through the skull into the inner ear. Isn't science cool?
7/
This differs from sensorineural hearing loss, where there are problems with the inner ear or acoustic nerve. In that case, the outer and middle ear work fine, but the inner ear does not. The inner ear turns sound waves into electrical impulses that are then sent to the brain. A cochlear implant replaces the function of the inner ear by picking up sound waves with a microphone AND turning them into electrical impulses.
A BAHA merely sends sound waves by microphone to the inner ear. Make sense? 8/
