INVESTIGATING CONCERNS

If you’re worried, your first port of call should be a paediatrician or an ear, nose and throat specialist, who will then examine your child. The specialist will use an instrument called an otoscope to see inside your baby’s ears. This allows them to see the eardrum and detect problems that could be causing hearing loss. Your specialist might refer you to an audiologist for further hearing tests.

Hearing tests can be done on a child at any age – from newborn to older.

NEW TYPES OF HEARING TECHNOLOGY

COCHLEAR IMPLANTS

Since 1986, when cochlear-implant surgery was first introduced in South Africa, the operation has revolutionised countless lives. Cochlear implants offer a solution for profoundly deaf children, or those with total sensorineural hearing loss, who aren’t able to gain enough auditory information to learn to speak. Most of these children still have some residual nerve fragments in the ear, which may be capable of sending sound impulses to the brain if they’re stimulated electronically. The cochlear implant does precisely that.

During surgery, an electrical device is implanted into the bone behind the ear. It consists of a microphone, a speech processor and a coil that decodes and sends electric impulses to the electrodes.

The operation is only used for the profoundly deaf, and can be performed on children as young as 18 months. Which is just as well, since studies show that children who are diagnosed late and don’t receive early intervention for language development don’t ever match their peers’ language skills.

STATE-OF-THE-ART HEARING AIDS

DIGITALLY PROGRAMMABLE HEARING AIDS

Gone are the days when the hearing impaired were burdened with large, awkward hearing aids that were squeaky and annoying. Today’s devices are virtually invisible, and most of them contain a microcomputer that’s very sophisticated at responding to noise in the environment. Not unlike the top-quality audio system in your lounge at home, they filter out unwanted noise, clean up and clarify sound quality, and automatically adjust the volume. They’re also computerprogrammed to match the nuances of each person’s hearing loss.

COMPLETELY-IN-THE-CANAL (CIC) HEARING AIDS

This is the smallest hearing aid available and fits deep inside the ear canal – far enough to be almost out of sight. It’s suitable for older children, but not for infants, as a degree of manual dexterity is necessary to manage it.