By REBECCA WHITE
rebecca@du2.byu.edu
Hearing loss in newborns affects thousands of babies born each year. In fact, it is the most frequent birth defect among babies born in the United States, said the director of the National Center for Hearing Assessment and Management (NCHAM).
Dr. Karl White has been researching hearing screening techniques for more than a decade and has found that unless these babies are identified within a few weeks of birth and given hearing aids and other types of educational intervention, they will not develop language normally and will lag behind their peers in all other areas.
Although the importance of identifying hearing loss early has long been recognized, it is only in the last few years that tools have been available to do it.
Hospitals in Utah are among the leaders in the country in implementing these important new procedures. For example, babies born in Utah County hospitals all undergo a universal newborn hearing screening test before they leave the hospital, said Todd Huffman, an audiologist at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center.
'We've been able to identify hearing loss and fit infants with hearing aids by two months of age and parents are very appreciative of that. Others are just excited to learn that their baby hears fine,' he said.
Parents receive a letter from the audiologists that tells them if their baby has passed or if the baby needs another screening.
'Our baby passed the screening, and as a new mother that gave me one less thing to worry about,' said Amy Palmer, a recent graduate of BYU.
Audiologists in Utah County and around the world are using a screening procedure called Otoacoustic Emissions.
A small earplug placed inside the infant's ear makes a soft clicking sound. If the baby can hear normally the ear responds to this clicking by making a very soft 'echo' which is not audible to a person, but can be measured by a tiny microphone in the earplug. Computer software registers the response and processes the data, Huffman said.
'According to the computer reading, we either pass the baby as being able to hear or we refer the baby for another screening and additional diagnostic testing,' he said.
The changes in how hospital personnel are doing newborn hearing screening all started in 1988 when C. Everett Koop, then Surgeon General of the United States, set a goal that all children with significant hearing loss would be identified before 12 months of age.
A number of research and development projects were soon started which led to the widespread use of otoacoustic emissions to do screening. As a result, the age of hearing loss identification in children has been significantly reduced from an average of three years old to an average of two to three months old, White said.
The National Center for Hearing Assessment and Management at Utah State University has conducted much of the research which led to the development of these new techniques. For the last few years NCHAM has been working with hospitals in Utah to help them implement programs.
Huffman said that hospitals in Utah County began screening with Otoacoustic emissions in 1996 and by 1998 Utah law mandated that all hospitals conduct some type of screening on all newborns.
Screening for hearing loss has helped many newborns get the help they need.
'Effective newborn hearing screening programs have opened up a world of opportunities for infants with hearing loss,' White said.
Otoacoustic emissions can also be used to screen hearing in older children. Dr. David McPherson, chair of the audiology and speech pathology department at BYU, recently accompanied nine BYU students to Poland to help set up a hearing screening program there.
'In Poland, right now, we are working with school age children to determine if they have a hearing loss. As of now, the students have screened 5,000 children and will use the results to evaluate the academic and social effects that hearing loss has on children,' McPherson said.
The students are involved with Polish officials in setting up a permanent hearing screening procedure.
'We want to set up a routine hearing screening program,' said Stefani Lee, a graduate student in audiology, from Santaquin, Utah County. 'If kids are identified at an early age it will reduce the amounts of language difficulties and social problems they could encounter.'
It has been proven by scientists, doctors and parents that even a minor hearing loss slows down language development and can inhibit children from learning.
'I observed that my children had to compensate and find other avenues of learning. They became loud and made up their own language. We didn't know that there were different stages of hearing. It takes most kids just months to go through these stages, ours took years. They received hearing aids at 4 years old and suddenly started progressing rapidly,' said Stephanie Carlston, a resident of Salt Lake City.
It is not enough to just identify hearing loss. After identifying it, parents need to get appropriate help for their children.
'The most important thing in early detection is to begin intervention for the development of speech and language skills immediately,' McPherson said.
This thought was echoed by White.
'These new technologies are capable of identifying the babies who need help, but to use these procedures efficiently we need to immediately apply the information we get and provide ways for a child with a hearing loss to develop language skills.'