Age:   30

Gender: Female

The patient reports gradual onset loss.  She says she is hardly aware of it, but that she notices that her husband hears the baby in the other room more easily than she does.   She is concerned that she may have the same problem as her oldest sister, who needed ear surgery.  She doesn’t know the name of her sister’s condition, but says the sister had an “ear bone” problem – “some sort of a bone growth”.

She says that she can tell that her left ear is worse than her right ear because when she switches the phone to that ear, she has to turn it up a bit.

She does not have any ringing in the ears.  She does not report fullness of the ears, ear pain, nor dizziness.

• Research to determine a possible cause of her sister’s hearing loss, and determine if it has a genetic link.