Introduction and description of content
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- Category: Children's Screening
- Last Updated on Thursday, 19 March 2015 17:14
- Written by Editorial Board
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The issue of screening young children is usually related with their performance in the school environment. Obviously "poor" hearing affects not only attention but also comprehension.
As NHS programs become EDHI (hearing detection and intervention) the gap we currently have in children hearing screening closes down. The remaining undetectable deficits will probably be due (to a great extent) to transitory factors such as otitis media , imponing a lesser problem that the one we are facing today.
In terms of technologies , OAEs are fast in assessing the auditory periphery, but the school ambient conditions could result in unreliable data. Significant advances in the area of impedance tympanometry (see the March 2015 Editorial) and specially in in the area of Reflectance suggest that we can easily and accurately obtain a picture of middle ear status. Advances in micro-electronics have resulted in small and intelligent Audiometers (PC-based or not) which can provide accurate readings of the hearing threshold even in a noisy school environment. The combination of behavioral and tympanometry data is to our opinion the best index for Children's hearing. A recent paper by members of the Editorial board (Sliwa et al, A comparison of audiometric and objective methods in hearing screening of school children. A preliminary study. Int J Pediatr Otorhinolaryngol 2011 75 (4), pp. 483-488)) points at this direction.
The area of Children's hearing screening is still open .. because we need to define / optimize better protocols and technologies . So this section will address these issues and report on various solutions.
Several resources related to this topic, already present in the Portal :
1. Christie Yoshinaga-Itano : Infant Audiologic assessment and amplification (on-line lecture)
2. Douglas H. Keefe : Introduction to the Use of Acoustic Reflectance and Admittance to Assess Middle-Ear Status in Neonates (on-line lecture)
3. Douglas H. Keefe : Using Middle-Ear Measurements to Interpret Cochlear, Sensorineural, and Behavioral Responses in a Study of Neonatal Hearing Impairment (on-line lecture)
4. Carlie Driscoll : A Normative Study of Distortion Product Otoacoustic Emissions in Six-year-old School Children (white paper)
5. Bart Vinck : Distortion product otoacoustic emissions: An objective technique for the screening of hearing loss in children treated with platin derivatives (white paper)
6. Thierry Morlet : Use of Otoacoustic Emissions in Elementary Schools (white paper)