King–Kopetzky syndrome

The King Kopetzsky syndrome refers to a hearing disorder that is characterized by the difficulty in spite of normal hearing to understand speech in background noise. The King Kopetzsky syndrome is considered one of the Auditory Processing Disorders ( APD).

Patients with King - Kopetzsky syndrome describe hearing impairments in speech understanding (especially with background noise ) and show unusual values ​​in the "Social Hearing Handicap Index " ( SHHI ) with normal or only slightly different results in all standard hearing tests. Although the syndrome was described in 1948 by Samuel J. Kopetzsky and in 1954 was further investigated by PF King, it's in German-speaking countries until now little is known .. However, up to 10 % of all patients who visit a doctor because of hearing problems, suffer from.

Causes

The causes of the King Kopetzsky syndrome are not yet definitively resolved. However, there is increasing evidence that King Kopetzsky patients often than the average at the same time to neuropsychiatric abnormalities such as, inter alia, Anxiety disorders and Obsessionalität suffer. Studies related to familial clustering indicate that the material on hereditary factors ( autosomal dominant), as possibly contributing to the forging of the King Kopetzsky syndrome and the neuropsychiatric abnormalities.

Treatment

After the exclusion of other reasons for the hearing loss, the King Kopetzsky syndrome may by targeted auditory training, stress reduction, sound amplification systems (eg in classrooms ), treatment of the possibly existing neurological symptoms and, if a measurable hearing loss should be present in the audiogram, if necessary, also with be treated the use of hearing aids.