The United Nations World Health Organisation (WHO) defines hearing impairment as the complete or partial loss of the ability to hear from one or both ears and can be graded as mild, moderate, severe or profound.

Hearing impairment can be reported for all people who are in scope of the CLD collection. If the person has a sensory registration, use the registration category to reflect the severity of the impairment, otherwise use the ‘severity unknown’ option when any recorded health condition uses the old EQ-CL wording. ‘Unknown’ should be used where the person’s hearing status has not been recorded. An impairment can also be recorded if this is on the local record and not formally registered. • Deaf with speech • Deaf without speech • Hard of hearing • No hearing impairment • Hearing impairment - severity unknown • Unknown Data type: Defined list