In the US, each year brings forth 12,000 new cases of babies with permanent hearing loss right at birth. According to the National Center for Hearing Assessment and Management, some form of hearing loss affects three out of every 1,000 babies, thereby making it a very commonly occurring birth defect.
The degree of hearing loss can range from being unable to hear at all to trouble in hearing only some soft sounds. Hearing aids and therapy of some kind is quite common in children with hearing loss.
In acute cases, doctors are left with no option but cochlear implants. A damaged part of the ear will not sense even the amplified sounds delivered by the hearing aids; but implants bypass the damaged part and send audio signals straight to the auditory nerve. Complete restoration of hearing is still not possible with any of these devices.
Screening babies for hearing defects, remains the best option. The first few months of a baby?s life are the best time to start treatment because then they are able to develop their language skills early on.
Immediately after birth, babies can now screened for hearing defects using a procedure recently introduced. In case hearing loss is spotted within six months after a baby?s birth, modern procedures are able to make sure that language development proceeds almost normally.
Most often, the hearing problems in children are detected after they are 22 to 26 months old. Speech and language development problems happen to be the first symptoms that lead to the detection of hearing defects.
A new procedure can now help screen newborn babies for hearing problems even before they are allowed to the hospital.
Otacoustic Emissions are able to conclusively establish a newborn?s hearing ability. A soft probe is inserted inside the ear canal and sounds are delivered through it. A microphone placed inside the probe picks up the echo produced by the cochlea, or the inner ear. The difference between this procedure and any conventional procedure is that it had reduced the screening time for each ear from 10 minutes to 10 seconds.
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.
This is a small test that takes only 15 minutes for each ear.
When these tests are run, the babies must be sleeping. It is a common occurrence, in children around the age of 2 years, that parents first detect speech or language development problems which are only a symptom, the root cause being hearing problems.
To eliminate the chance of babies having problems after growing up, it is best to screen all of them. This has the potential of making a huge difference in the children?s lives, especially language development which could affect their performance at school.
If babies fail both these tests need to be taken to an audiologist for diagnostic testing. Diagnostic testing is required for about 2 percent of the babies.
To compensate for hearing loss, amplifications are now available for infants as small as 2 to 3 months of age. To ensure normal development, it is important that these children are given early help.
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