About Hearing

Childrens Corner

Children Who Require Audiological Evaluation

The profession of audiology began after the Second World War when it was recognized that many of the returning veterans had sustained hearing losses. Audiology was at first devoted to adult rehabilitation, but then moved to testing and prescription of amplification for children.

Audiology could now be said to be concerned with the detection of hearing loss and the use of residual hearing in the habilitation of children with hearing loss. Today the role of the audiologist in the evaluation of children's hearing and the fitting of hearing aids is even more important than all those years ago. According to the Pediatric Working Group (1996) the audiologist is the only professional singularly qualified to select and fit all forms of amplification for children.

For almost all children with permanent sensori-neural hearing loss, initiation of intervention begins with hearing aid fitting. With all the advances in technology this is a challenging task for which the audiologist is uniquely qualified. They are knowledgeable, trained and skilled in the evaluation of the child's hearing, the diversity of amplification options, the selection and fitting of amplification, as well as the verification of this fitting and the monitoring thereof.

The problem of hearing loss in children is significant if we consider the following facts:
  • One in 1000 children is born with profound deafness.
  • An additional 2 children in 1000 will acquire deafness in early childhood.
  • Infants who need intensive medical care during the newborn period are at special risk for hearing loss, resulting in 1 child in 50 from the intensive care nurseries being hearing impaired.
  • Ear infection, the most common infectious disease of childhood may be associated with hearing loss.
  • Nearly 100% of all children will develop some periods of hearing loss related to ear infection during the period from birth through to 11 years.

The Quest for Early Identification of Hearing Loss
  • show that an infant with significant hearing impairment who receives intervention by six months of age will perform significantly better in language development than the infant who is identified after six months of age (Yoshinago-Itano et al, 1998).
  • Although the average age of identification in the US is being reduced, until very recently, it has been 2½ years of age. Children with mild-to-moderate hearing losses are often not identified until school age. A child identified at 2½ years of age will not have the same language developmental outcome as an infant identified before 6 months of age.

Hearing and Communication
  • Hearing and listening form the invisible cornerstones of spoken communication.
  • Assessment and management of a child's hearing sensitivity and listening ability are pivotal to all educational programming that uses speech as a means of communication.
  • Infants and toddlers spend much of their day engaged in active or passive listening activities as a means of obtaining information from their environments.
  • The importance of hearing to the communication and learning process tends to be significantly underestimated because hearing impairment is invisible; thus the effects of hearing impairment often are associated with problems or causes other than the hearing impairment.

Hearing Loss as a Continuum
  • The ambiguity of hearing impairment is further magnified by the tendency to erroneously categorize the hearing impairment into only 2 classifications: normal hearing or deafness.
  • The concept that hearing impairment occurs along a broad continuum needs to be emphasized as does the fact that very few people have no hearing at all.

It is imperative for any children who has or have had any of the following to be evaluated audiologically:
  • History of chronic otitis media (middle ear infection)
  • Complaints from the teacher regarding concentration and/or attention difficulties.
  • Children who often ask for repetition.
  • Children who often don't hear when called from another room.
  • Slow speech and language development.
  • Parents who think their children do not hear 100%
  • Parents who are worried about their child's hearing.
  • Other family members who have speech language and hearing problems
  • Any history of mumps, measles or meningitis.

Who are at risk for a hearing loss:
  • Familial history of hearing loss.
  • Any history of ventilation for > 5 days
  • Any history of hyperbilirubemia or yellow jaundice
  • Any presence of suffering from a syndrome associated with any type of hearing loss
  • Any presence or history of cleft palate
  • Birth weight of < 1500g
  • Any consumption of ototoxic medication
  • History of neonatal meningitis.

What are the symptoms of hearing loss:
  • The child's speech is unclear and not age appropriate
  • The baby does not startle or wake to loud sounds
  • The baby does not imitate sounds
  • The child does not react when being called from behind.
  • The child frequently asks for repetition
  • The child does not progress in school
  • The child has difficulty attending to listening activities