Hearing things
New hearing tests employing the latest state-of-the-art technology, are going on trial in 20 health authorities across the country by the autumn. Babies will be given the minute-long Oto-Acoustic Emission test, within two days of birth. The test involves sending sound into the baby’s ear and measuring the level of sound returned, thus calculating the level of hearing function. It can be adjusted according to the complexity of each case, which means if there are concerns after a test, a more detailed one will be offered.
This will be a great advance on the present system, which fails to detect three quarters of the children born deaf each year in the UK. At the moment, parents wait until their baby is seven to eight months old before the health visitor carries out a ‘distraction test’. The baby sits on her parent’s lap and is encouraged to play with a toy, while the health visitor makes sounds out of sight to both the left and right of the child to see whether they notice.
Poor testing means that many children with hearing problems aren’t identified until they start school, by which time their language development is dramatically behind their peers’. One American study showed that if babies can’t hear well, their communication skills suffer from the age of six months.
It’s estimated that three in every 100 children experience some degree of hearing loss by the time they go to school. It may affect one or both ears, and a child may be able to hear some sounds or nothing at all.
There are basically three types of deafness:
Conductive hearing loss – a problem with the outer or middle ear. This includes temporary hearing loss caused by ear infections, colds and allergies. It’s usually a mild hearing loss.
Sensory hearing loss – malfunction of the inner ear or damage to the auditory nerve. When the nerve is damaged, hearing loss is usually permanent. This type of hearing loss can be genetic, or may be caused by a serious illness like meningitis. It can also occur in the womb, if the mother contracts German measles while she’s pregnant or suffers with severe food poisoning such as salmonella or listeria. Babies born prematurely and those deprived of oxygen at birth may also suffer deafness.
Central Hearing Loss – caused by changes in the auditory centre of the brain, due to injury, disease or a tumour. It can also be hereditary.
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