Hearing Loss ?
SeasideBride06
member
My BFF has a three year old daughter and a four month old son. In the hospital her son failed his hearing test. They went to an ENT at 6 weeks for another test and it came back as "inconclusive." Today they went for yet another hearing test. The baby was perfectly quiet and still for the whole thing, and he failed again. The doctor seems to think there is significant hearing issues. He will have one more test this week to determine if and how deaf he is (brain wave test, I think.)
Has anyone else gone through this? Do you have any advice for my friend? The doctor only told them that this is a pass or fail type of test and they have no information about what the severity could be.
TIA!
ETA: Let me also add that my friend feels that he does hear some things. For example, when their daughter comes into the room being very loud, the baby will jump.
Re: Hearing Loss ?
We have, sort of. Have they done ABR? The baby may actually need to be sedated for this.
In any case, they need to do further testing to determine the cause (structural, etc) of hearing loss. They do now offer cochlear implants, and sometimes this is done before the age of 1 (here is an interesting study: https://www.thechildrenshospital.org/wellness/info/news/46277.aspx). Sometimes a surgery is required, and no implants.
My maternal aunt and her husband were both born deaf. They had 2 kids, both without any hearing problems, and had a wonderful like fogether. And this is not even in the US, but in a country that is very anti-people with disabilities.
Best of luck to your friend and hope all issues with the baby get resolved quickly and easily.
hi, my kiddo doesn't have hearing loss, but I am an SLP working in early intervention and i must say that early detection of hearing loss is extremely important for speech language development.
there are different types of loss: Conductive - meaning the sound waves are blocked by something in the ear canal or the middle ear - most commonly fluid due to an ear infection, sometimes a bony growth in the ear canal. Your friends baby most likely does NOT have this type of loss. If a dr. can see the ear drum w/ their scope they don't have anything blocking the ear canal, and usually drs can see fluid if its in the middle ear. They can get a tympanogram reading at the pedi office to determine if fluid is impacting the ability of the eardrum to properly vibrate and set off the chain of little hearing bones to stimulate the cochlea and ultimately the auditory nerve. maybe this tympanogram is what the pedi is referring to as pass/fail? not sure
most more serious hearing loss cases are sensorineural, meaning something is wrong with the cochlea "the organ of hearing" or the auditory nerve to the brain. For most kids it is not the nerve, but the cochlea. The cochlea has tiny hair cells that get stimulated which then create an electric impulse sent to the auditory nerve. THese hair cells can be born fragile and disintegrate over time, they can be missing or otherwise impaired.
Different hair cells pick up/relate to different pitches or frequencies of sound.
you can have a mild, moderate, severe or profound hearing loss. the loss can be in one or both ears, each ear can have its own configuration of loss.
most people hear all frequencies at a level of 15 decibels or less - so pretty quiet, like a whisper. if you have a mild loss then some frequencies need to be at more like 20-40 db to hear it.
Maybe only high frequency sounds need to be louder to be heard, but low frequency sounds can be heard at quieter levels - could explain why the baby hears his sisters feet bounding around the room - or he could even be feeling vibrations. Hearing aids can usually help mild - moderate hearing loss kids pretty well.
A cochlear implant is for kids who have an intact auditory nerve, but something wrong with the cochlea. The device will process sound into electric impulses which then stimulate the auditory nerve. So it doesn't restore normal hearing exactly but kids can have very good results with speech langauge development. with all these things the earlier starting the better, you can expect a lot of pulling out of the hearing aids early on, but you have to keep on putting them back in. The eligibility for this is usually severe-profound loss bilaterally. So your friend's son may not "qualify" for this.
your friend's baby needs to have an ABR (auditory brainstem response) test done, like PP said they are usually sedated for this. I have seen these with more detailed results than pass/fail though, they usually can tell you what the loss is at different frequency (pitch).
sorry this is a novel, but I hope some of it helps! best of luck to your BFF and her little one! I would alse recommend early intervention for the infant.
Chrissy
I am pretty sure this is the test he will have this week. I know they are putting him to sleep and that it does test his brain waves or something.
Thanks for your responses!
ETA: Let me also add that my friend feels that he does hear some things. For example, when their daughter comes into the room being very loud, the baby will jump.
First, I want to say that I hope the hearing loss is not severe and that I wish the best. But if it is severe, I just wanted to share my 2 cents.
I am deaf myself. If the child is indeed severe with hearing loss, it is very likely the child is feeling the thumping on the floor making it seem like he is hearing since they have heighten sense of feeling. I use shadows, mirrors, window reflection to lead myself to being aware what is going on around me. If someone clapped behind me, I can feel the 'wind" from the hand movements.
There is a lot of technology and support out there for the deaf. While it won't restore the severe hearing loss (rather help improve some), they can have a full life. The best thing the parents can do for a deaf child is to bond with the child while accepting the hearing loss for what it is instead of being so tough on "polishing" the kid to ?appear? hearing out of fear of the child not seeming normal. If communication can happen in the form where the child has complete understanding of what is being communicated instead of guessing or only getting partial information, the happier and closer the bond the child will have with his/her parents. There will be struggles and it is different but it can be overcome.