Leading Congenital Disability In Children

Having a hearing impairment means that you have the impotence to assimilate what others around you are saying. The loss of hearing and its severity comes in many different levels. In more severe cases of deafness, like in Jacobs’ case, a hearing aid gives very little to no help at all. Jacobs’ disability brought him many challenges. In school he

For most children there is no clear reason as to why there is a delay in the development of speech, language and communication skills. Therefore, an adult should never assume that the child’s speech, language and communication problems are due to hearing loss. It may be that the child is experiencing communicating difficulties that are unrelated to their hearing problems because the child may not have acquired the vocabulary necessary to express his thoughts and actions.

Getting parents involved is essential to supporting the development of a child with hearing loss. Counselling parents on the type and degree of hearing loss their child has and the effects of hearing loss is important. It is important to not focus solely on what the child cannot hear but also what the child can hear. Parents will need a lot of support in the beginning and it is my job as an audiologist to provide information and my professional advice. The goal is to help parents make the choices that are right for them and create positive outcomes for the child. It is necessary for parents to understand the benefit of amplification or intervention services so that everyone involved is working towards a common goal. Parents should also be knowledgeable of the services available to them and be prepared to advocate for their child. The school system provides supports for children with hearing loss and parents need to know how to obtain the services for their child. The audiologist can act as a resource for parents at any point as the child develops there will be new challenges. There is a partnership between the parent and the audiologist based on trust and a mutual understanding to provide the best care for the

An average of 90% of all babies born deaf or with some type of hearing loss are born to hearing parents. Deafness can be caused by a variety of things both genetic and environmental. Upon learning their child is deaf, most hearing families try to find ways to fix what they feel is a defect. However, deaf families rejoice in their child's deafness because now they have another person to strengthen the deaf community and carry on the American Deaf culture.

The National Institute on Deafness defines the cochlear implant as, “… a small, complex electronic device that can help to provide a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf or severely hard-of-hearing.” The cochlear implant was first introduced in 1979 and it is estimated that 324,000 implants have been implanted worldwide. The surgery is proven to work better when the child being implanted is young, preferably younger than five. It is ideal to implant a child before their language or speech has developed. The FDA has approved children as young as 12-months old to receive the cochlear implant.

Since hearing is either blocked or nonexistent, steps for types of hearing aids are available. There is Atresia repair which is a surgical procedure done as early as three years old on some candidates to reopen the canal to the inner ear. Some are ideal candidates while others are to wait and look at other hearing aids. Soft band bone conducting hearing aids that can conduct sound through the skull and deliver some sound to the inner ear through a head band can be introduced to a child as a newborn. The idea to have a child wear a hearing aid as early as six months is to introduce sound and language early. Cochlear implantation or BAHA (Bone Anchored Hearing Appliance) can be done at five years old. There is also the VORP(Vibrating Ossicular Prosthesis), or a Vibrant Soundbridge, which is a device that helps create the middle ear. However, implantation may not be needed if a functioning inner ear is detected. If an inner ear is detected in a MRI and the child shows signs of having a chance to regain hearing, surgery is

The younger you are implanted the better the chances of being able to fully hear are. The older you are when implanted the less likely the chances of being able to fully hear are. In 2010 it was reported that over 40 million Americans are older than 65 years old, of those 40 million many will most likely experience hearing loss. By the year of 2050, the amount of senior citizens will increase by 147%(Sladen, D. P., & Zappler, A. (2015)). That is more people with hearing loss and that means a growing need for an implant that may or may not work because of the age of the user. "An estimated 65% of people 10 years and older have a hearing impairment(Sladen, D. P., & Zappler, A. (2015))." With the older a person becomes the more hearing loss they have. While losing hearing it would be very difficult to gain hearing back with an implant. By implanting a child at a young age you still need to work with the to train the how to use the implants. There has been new resources for teacher and therapists of children who have been implanted with cochlear implants. They are called musical ears and they help improve the child's musicality at a young age (Musical resources for working with children with CIs. (2010, August). The Hearing Review, 17(9), 48).That is why it is very important that if one is thinking about being implanted or implanting a child it should be done at a young

Explain that wearing the aids as often and as consistently as possible is essential to speech and language development for the child. The hearing aids provide access to sounds for the child and without this stimulation speech and language development will be negatively impacted. Auditory input is needed to help the child to learn to listen, if the aids are not being used and the auditory pathways of the brain are not being stimulated then the child will eventually lose that ability. The quality of the signal in the hearing aids is directly related to the child’s speech intelligibility. A high quality auditory input provides a better opportunity for learning and better speech intelligibility. Full access is important for children who are learning

Implants can restore or help with hearing in young children before they are too far behind in developmentally, which will allowing them to catch up with their peers. This allows them to live more normally by being able to attend a regular schools in regular classes. They may also feel more included in activities and other aspects

Hearing loss is the most common physical disability in the whole wide world. In the United States alone, about 28 million people have some level of hearing impairment that interferes with their ability to understand normal speech and participate in conversations. Another 2 million cannot hear at all.

Scientists and doctors have been researching different ways to help them becoming hearing again. If you have a hearing impairment, you might be able to try cochlear implants. A cochlear implant is “a device that provides direct electrical stimulation to the auditory nerve in the inner ear” (ASHA). Cochlear implants cannot always help. It all depends on the severity of the hearing impairment or deafness. It is also very good to work with early intervention services. They will provide services to help learn sign language, information of doorbell lights, and ways to make phone

In the same way that no two individuals are alike, nor are any two families with deaf or hard of hearing members. Due to the various ways that hearing loss can occur, the occurrence of hearing loss in any one family can vary. There are families with deaf parents and hearing children. There are families with deaf parents and deaf children. There are families who have never encountered a deaf or hearing impaired person that suddenly have a child who is deaf or hard of hearing. Hearing impairment affects different families in different ways. Many believe that families where both parents and the children are deaf or hard of hearing have an advantage, because the parents are already a part of the deaf culture and thus their children are born into the community. Meanwhile, hearing parents who birth a deaf or hearing impaired child have to adjust to a new way of relating to and communicating with not only their child, but also with those involved in the rearing of that child. Fortunately for these parents, organizations like the Center for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing exist to provide these families with resources, funds, and education to help them tread on unfamiliar territory. These kinds of organizations connect all families who have members with the disability, and no matter the family dynamic, there are resources for them to take advantage of, including legal aid. As seen in the short clip from the Center for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, early childhood, around the time of

I also want to briefly point out the range of hearing impairments that a child can have. Even though a child may not be classified as “profoundly impaired” or deaf, this does not mean that the child will not face several of the obstacles a deaf child does. Therefore, even though this site is taken from a “worse case scenario” perspective, many of the methods and therapy situations may apply to those with less severe impairments.

Approximately fifteen percent of American adults have some hearing loss problems and around two or three children in every thousand are born with a loss of hearing. This has lead to the development of a lot of different instruments to help amplify hearing or produce it synthetically. The most common of these fall under the category of either hearing aids or cochlear implants but there are also many others including auditory brainstem implants.

Congenital hearing loss is described as hearing loss that exists at birth. Factors responsible for this condition include those present during pregnancy (such as hereditary factors), as well as factors present after pregnancy. An inherited congenital hearing loss could be conductive, sensorineural, or even a combination of both. The amount or progression of this type of hearing loss varies according to each individual’s case. According to Richard Smith, congenital hearing loss is “syndromic (associated with malformations of the external ear or other organs or with medical problems involving other organ systems) or nonsyndromic (no associated visible abnormalities of the external ear or any related medical problems)…” Over 400 genetic