The European Union Concerted Action Programme on Genetic Hearing Impairment is concerned with co-ordinating work in this field to advance progress across the European Union, and with promoting collaboration with countries, such as the USA, outside the EU. The aim is to bring together clinical geneticists and audiologists, as well as basic scientists and other clinicians with a general interest in this field, to standardise the audiological and terminological approaches and publish state of the art interdisciplinary studies.

The aim of this book is to provide a description of what is currently known about the genetics of deafness for audiologists, otologists and general genetics. It includes a number of background chapters introducing relevant genetics for audiologists and otologists and relevant aspects of auditory intervention for geneticists. These cover the epidemiology of hearing loss and the current situation with regard to gene identification within the field.