Performing This Simple Test Will Verify That Your Baby Can Hear

Sean was only 36 hours old, and as this 8 pound, 6 ounce infant slept, his hearing was being tested. He was taken by an audiologist to a testing station with a personal computer that looked perfectly ordinary except that it had some wires attached to it. The audiologist then hit a few buttons on the keypad and gently inserted a tiny probe into the baby's ear, which led to the computer by one of these wires. The monitor appeared with a complex, multi-colored graphics display. Read this site if you want digital hearing aids information.

I visited this research institute that focused on hearing to see this procedure, which can allow children with hearing issues to have a head start on the problems that they will encounter in life. Over 4,000 children are born in the United States profoundly deaf and another 24,000 newborns being born with at least some level of hearing loss each year. The procedure that I observed was the OAE test that is used very soon after birth to detect hearing problems.

An existing hearing problem has commonly gone undetected until children have reached the age of 2 or 3 before it has been realized by their parents or doctors. This can lead to tragic results for the child. Speech and language development is grossly delayed. Children suffering from hearing loss often start speaking long after their peers, and they often seem separate from their environment in a way that kids with normal hearing are not. A child's emotional and psychological development is most profound during their first two years. Unfortunately, some children who are hearing impaired are misdiagnosed as suffering from mental retardation.

OAE testing begin in 1990, but before this, it could be expensive and complicated to test each newborn baby. The auditory brain stem response was a highly precise test, according to one audiologist. Electrodes are affixed to the child which are used to measure how the auditory nerves react as they transmit information towards the brain. The problems with this test included, the $90 cost, the need for a physician or audiologist to administer the test, and the fact that it was a complex, 30 minute test. There is just not an adequate number of professionals in this country to give out these evaluations to all the children being born. You can get the best hearing testing information by visiting this website.

The advantages of OAE are, that it is much less costly, and a full time audiologist is not a requirement. Hearing is tested by measuring the motion of hair cells located in the cochlea when they are struck by sound waves, a short and easy five-minute process. In Sean's case, the probe delivered sound into his ear, and when his hair cells vibrated in reaction to the sound, the microphone was able to detect it. The test was then repeated on the other ear. The newborn baby had almost perfect hearing.

For infants who fail the first test, a second one is completed one week later. Fluid in the ear canal just after birth, is a common occurrence, and may lead to a bad test result. An auditory brain stem response test is used in the event that a baby does not pass the second hearing test, this helps to target the problem area. Once the results are in, the pediatrician, parents and audiologist meet to discuss what options may exist.

Hearing aids can be worn by children starting at the age of 3 months in cases where there is minimal hearing loss. In some cases, that will solve the problem and the baby will be able to hear normally. Once a baby comes to be eighteen months old, a surgeon will be able to conduct a cochlear implant, which is a surgery involving permanent rectification for their hearing conditions.

Should a baby suffer from serious hearing loss, it is suggested that parents pay special attention to teaching their child using plenty of visual clues. If the children who experience such problems receive this extra attention, they will normally develop regularly. When faced with raising a deaf child parents have a variety of styles to consider, each with there own positive points, among these are lip-reading, cued speech, hearing aids, and American Sign Language.