Otosclerosis usually occurs in people during their teens or early years and causes ear bone degeneration, the sound conducting bones of the ear will start to change in consistency from hard bone to soft bone tissue. This degeneration will then cause a build-up of excess bone tissue around a bone in the middle ear called the stapes. When this happens the stapes won’t move as it should but instead becomes immobile, when this happens it can’t vibrate as it normally does and this affects the hearing.

A person who has problems with sound being prevented from being conducted to the inner ear is said to have a conductive hearing loss. If the nerve associated with hearing is also affected with Otosclerosis then this causes sensorineural hearing loss. The exact cause of nerve damage associated with this disease isn’t quite known but it is thought that toxic enzymes released into the cochlear are one of the reasons.

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