Tests Are Necessary To Evaluate Hearing of Infants

There is a permanent hearing loss in about 12,000 babies born each year in the United States. As per the statistics available with the National Center for Hearing Assessment and Management, the most common defect at birth, three out of every thousand, is hearing loss of one kind or the other.

From a simple discomfort in the ear to severe hearing disorders to complete deafness, there can be varying degrees of hearing loss. It is quite a routine matter to provide some treatment, in conjunction with hearing aids, to children suffering from hearing loss.

In cases of the extreme kind, where the more commonplace treatment does not help, cochlear implants are the only option. If a part of the ear is damaged, hearing aids which only amplify sounds are not effective; but cochlear implants are effective because they pass the sound directly to the auditory nerves. These devices cannot restore hearing to 100 percent.

Doctors will always prefer babies being screened. To give babies a fair chance to develop their language skills, the best approach is to start relevant therapies within the first few months.

A new procedure is proving very helpful in detecting hearing loss in babies immediately after birth. Normal language development is made feasible by modern procedures in children born with hearing loss provided this defect is detected within six months.

Hearing loss is usually detected in children when they are between 22 and 26 months of age. Speech and language development problems happen to be the first symptoms that lead to the detection of hearing defects.

It is now possible to screen all newborn babies for hearing loss even before they leave the hospital.

Otacoustic Emissions are being used increasingly to determine how well a baby is able to hear. A soft probe is used for delivering sounds into the ear canal. Inside the same probe is a microphone that captures an echo produced by the cochlea, or inner ear. Each ear is screened in just about 10 seconds compared to 10 minutes that any other procedure would take.

The Auditory Brainstem Response test is required to be administered to babies who fail the OAE. The ABR test measures the auditory nerve?s responses to sounds delivered to the baby?s ears by a disposable earphone, by three throwaway electrodes placed on the baby?s head and shoulders.

Each ear needs only 15 minutes to be screened in this manner.

One of the requirements of these tests is that babies must be asleep. Very many babies are not tested in this manner till they are about 2 years old and their parents start realizing their speech and language related problems.

That is why, screening all babies is most advisable. This will be a boon for children because they can now expect to lead normal lives as well as develop their language skills like other children.

Diagnostic testing by an audiologist is necessitated in the case of babies who fail both these tests. Roughly two percent of the babies need to be sent to an audiologist for diagnostic testing.

Amplification equipment is now available to compensate the hearing loss of 2 to 3 month old infants. Such early help can ensure normal development of children.

Article Source: http://www.newsarticlessite.com

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