Hearing loss support - Simple Hearing Test (But does it work?)

Author

Simple Hearing Test (But does it work?)

Ken

2006-04-15, 11:21 am

One of the Google ads when I logged into the group was for

http://www.med.umich.edu/1libr/tests/testa15.htm

This claims to establish , accurately, whether a baby has hearing loss
and the nature of any loss. Does anyone know how valid this test is?
Obviously they could run it on an adult and compare it with the
audiogram.

Gary G

2006-04-15, 11:21 am

It's been done for years...GG
"Ken" <kkerrison@ozemail.com.au> wrote in message
news:1145087188.785363.306390@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> One of the Google ads when I logged into the group was for
>
> http://www.med.umich.edu/1libr/tests/testa15.htm
>
> This claims to establish , accurately, whether a baby has hearing loss
> and the nature of any loss. Does anyone know how valid this test is?
> Obviously they could run it on an adult and compare it with the
> audiogram.
>

--
NewsGuy.Com 30Gb $9.95 Carry Forward and On Demand Bandwidth

HOHDAVE

2006-04-16, 11:18 am

Our twins had it done... It called Newborn Infant Screening. One of our
twins hearing was fine and the other wasn't. Later it was discovered
that she fluid behind the one twins that cause a hearing loss. She had
tubes put in her eardrum and she hear fine. She had to have tubes put
in 4 more time until she was 5 years old. Now, she is seven and no
hearing problem.

PATRICIA BURNS

2006-04-16, 1:15 pm

Ken wrote:

> One of the Google ads when I logged into the group was for
>
> http://www.med.umich.edu/1libr/tests/testa15.htm
>
> This claims to establish , accurately, whether a baby has hearing loss
> and the nature of any loss. Does anyone know how valid this test is?
> Obviously they could run it on an adult and compare it with the
> audiogram.

This was often the only test available to test babies' hearing. A -very-
experience pediatric audiologist can do an audiogram on an infant, but
there's not that many of them around.

Nowadays, for newborn screening, they use the Otoacoustic emissions (OAE)
test. It's much less invasion than with an Auditory Brain Stem Response
(ABR) (no knock out drops), and it gives a more accurate level of hearing
loss.

I had an OAE done for myself a few years ago and it accurately reflected
my audiogram (20dB across, but spiking to 25dB at 2000 Hz)...an exact on
match. When my daughter had her ABR...we were given a vague "severe
hearing loss" diagnosis and she had to have two doses of the medication
before she fell asleep for the test. She was groggy for the rest f the
day.

--
Patricia Burns
(Just one s)

Ken

2006-04-17, 1:18 am

<I had an OAE done for myself a few years ago and it accurately
reflected
my audiogram (20dB across, but spiking to 25dB at 2000 Hz)...an exact
on
match. When my daughter had her ABR...we were given a vague "severe
hearing loss" diagnosis and she had to have two doses of the medication
before she fell asleep for the test. She was groggy for the rest f the
day.

--
Patricia Burns >

Thanks. My query was not just idle curiousity - I wondered how accurate
diagnosis of infant cases such as Samantha and Shiny could be.

More personally, when a cochlear implant is fitted they run one of
these tests on the implant before closing off the surgery. I was
pleased, from the site I quoted, to learn that a brain stem test did
not invovle poking some wires up through your spine but this left open
the question of how effective such tests might be.

jenrose@jenrose.com

2006-04-18, 11:19 am

Shiny has had both ABR (sleeping, not sedated) and OAE done. The
results have not been consistent, except that by every measure it's
clear that she's got upper range loss and pretty good hearing in the
low/mid range. Not perfect, but not horrible. We're doing more testing
tomorrow afternoon, and whether we do ABR or VRA depends on how awake
she is.

Honestly, it would have been easier to test her hearing when she was
smaller than it is now that she's capable of pulling things out of her
ears... The only reason she wasn't tested in hospital is that she has
never been hospitalized--she was born in our kitchen in a large horse
trough used as a birth tub. It took us 7 months to persuade the doctors
that simply saying, "Get her screened" was not helpful, that saying,
"Go to *these* pediatric audiologists" would actually help us get it
done in teh face of all the other chaos going on at the time. Given
that we were doing blood testing, brain ultrasound, cardiology, etc.
hearing was sort of low on the totem pole, and my father-in-law's death
in the midst of all of that was also a signficant distraction. She was
9 months old when we first got her tested, and had, at that point, as
far as anyone knew, never had an ear infection. A couple weeks later
she got her first one and her ears remained stuffy for 6 weeks--we
ended up testing anyway.

Anyway, she has a lot of absent reflexes, but that's par for the
course, and it's hard to say what the ultimate effect is.

The good news is that we've been getting in a few more sessions of
using hearing aids even though the molds she had stopped fitting weeks
ago, thanks to our jury-rigged options, and we should get new molds
more appropriately cast tomorrow or the next day. The better news is
that she's really playing with her voice a lot and although her
development of speech sounds is peculiar, to say the least, she *is*
making noise and she is making some recognizable words, which is just
*marvelous*. She isn't consistent about it, but something about walking
into the room and having her turn to me and say, "Ta MAMA!" when I've
been at class for 3 hours is just pure bliss.

She's saying something that sounds like "bva" a lot--an oddly
complicated phoneme to start with, but hey.

The brainstem test involves post-it-noting electrodes to her head using
a sticky removable gel patch not unlike soothies breast pads, one or
two at the back and one on each ear. THen they put little pluggies in
her ears that go to the sound rig and I nurse her to sleep. She zonks
out pretty thoroughly while nursing, so even if she's not totally
asleep, we're still enough that they can get a good read, for as long
as she is nursing. When she starts moving around, the test is over and
if she wakes up promptly, we'll head back over to the behavioral sound
booth and they'll use the light-up animated bangy boxes for visual
reinforcement. Worked great the first 3 times but now she's fairly
habituated and could care less. That said, tomorrow we're going to see
if we can't try something where I tell the aud when Shiny starts
hearing something, because, you know, I can just *tell*. I can't
explain it, but I can see it in her face when she starts to hear
something, there's a "look" she gets even if she doesn't turn her head.
I can also tell when she's *not* hearing something... the first skill
is innate, the second is learned.

Anyway, Shiny has a very clear "listening" face and I'm hoping that the
aud will be open to trying the testing using that.

If we can't get good info tomorrow, I'm very tempted to ask for a
sedated ABR. I do NOT want to see my baby sedated, but we have to get
good info. The first time we did the ABR, she was too stuffy so we did
it using bone conduction at my suggestion to get a baseline. The second
time, the aud spent 25 minutes getting ambiguous responses to pure
tones and then switched to clicks and got 5 minutes of good responses
before Miss Shiny decided to wake up and pull everything off her head.

Jenrose

jenrose@jenrose.com

2006-04-18, 11:19 am

My understanding is that the OAE is not always accurate or definitive.
That for some it accurately reflects the audiogram but for others it
does not.

Jenrose