A woman is unable to hear men’s voices due to a rare hearing-loss condition according to a doctor in southern China.
The woman was rushed to the Qianpu Hospital in Xiamen, Fujian Province where a doctor treated her.
“She was able to hear me when I spoke to her but when a young male patient walked in, she couldn’t hear him at all,” Lin Xiaoqing, a doctor who treated Chen, told the Mail.
According to the Mail, the woman said she was working late and under a lot of stress in recent days. She was also not getting much sleep.
The doctor believes the fatigue and stress of lengthy days contributed to the hearing disorder. In North America RSHL affects about 3,000 people in all.
Those with RSHL typically cannot hear low-frequency noises.
Some diseases, mainly those affecting hair cells, can trigger the condition.
“The third most common source of RSHL is anything that causes a change in the pressure of the endolymph, a fluid in the inner ear. This includes things such as spinal or general anesthesia, intracranial hypertension, and a perilymphatic fistula,” the center’s website said.
Safety Is a Top Concern
The Thigpen Hearing Center said RSHL patients could face a greater risk of danger due to hearing loss.“The key reason is safety. Much of what you lose with RSHL is environmental sound,” the center said.
For example, if a patient cannot hear a car coming, “you can’t avoid it,” said the center.
“If someone some distance from you is trying to warn you away from something, you might not hear it, because volume is a product of the lower frequencies,” the center’s website said.
Symptoms Can Affect Phone Conversations
Some symptoms of RHSL include difficulty understanding speech on the phone, as talking over the phone typically delivers the low and middle frequencies, which can pose a problem for sufferers of RHS.Some may find it easy to understand women and children but not men in all circumstances.
“Because RSHL affects the lower frequencies, those with RSHL more clearly understand higher-frequency speech—that of women and children—than lower-frequency speech, such as that of men,” the center’s website said.
Meanwhile, patients might experience challenges in hearing a thunder or perhaps a refrigerator and other low-frequency environmental noise.