Question

A patient comes in to your office complaining of hearing loss in his left ear. He is bruised all along the left side of his face, and was recently involved in a fight outside of a restaurant where he was attacked with a large slimy fish, which slapped him across the side of his head, bursting his eardrum. What is your diagnosis

A. sensorimotor hearing loss
B. conditioned hearing loss
C. conductive hearing loss
D. sensorineural hearing loss
E. he is faking it to delay going to jail (malingering)

Answer 1

The correct diagnosis for a patient with hearing loss following an injury that burst the eardrum is conductive hearing loss, as it involves damage to the middle ear structures.

Step-by-step explanation:

Based on the patient's symptoms and the history of trauma from being struck in the ear, the most appropriate diagnosis is conductive hearing loss. Conductive hearing loss is associated with problems in the vibration of the eardrum or the movement of the ossicles.

In this case, the patient's eardrum was reported to be burst due to the impact of the fish, which confirms damage to the structures of the middle ear, characteristic of conductive hearing loss. Hearing aids are often effective in dealing with conductive hearing loss by amplifying sound waves, thereby assisting the vibration of the eardrum and the movement of the bones in the middle ear. In this scenario, the option C. conductive hearing loss, is the correct answer.