Abstract
Newborn hearing screening has facilitated diagnosis of congenital unilateral hearing loss（UHL）in neonates. It is necessary to provide adequate information and advice to the families of these neonates regarding the future outlook in infancy itself. In this study, we investigated hearing difficulty in patients with UHL based on their stages of life-span development. The study included 12 adults with UHL who were diagnosed with hearing loss by school age. We performed a semi-structured interview in these patients and obtained 106 concepts and 7 categories based on descriptive data. We observed rothat the concept of listening under noise was the most common, and a noisy environment was the most distressing situation. An increase in age was associated with increased difficulty as situations tended to become more concrete and unavoidable. Notably, after working adults, as information becomes higher and the listening scene becomes more complicated, it was shown that these patients’ concerns became more pronounced. It is important to continue to provide support and advice since infancy to enable these patients to develop coping strategies to overcome their limitations as working adults.
