Amplification in hearing-impaired infants

Abstract

Hearing instruments fitting to hearing-impaired infants are discussed in 4 stages: assessment, selection, verification and validation. For behavioral audiometric assessment, insert earphones used in VRA (visual reinforcement audiometry) are available to measure hearing thresholds across frequencies for each ear. In this study, hearing loss in 44 hearing-impaired infants was measured by VRA using insert earphones. In 70% of the infants, reliable audiograms were provided by VRA. Hearing aid selection was based on the audiograms, and functional gains were verified by a combination of aided and unaided VRA. From the age of 8 months onward, the VRA technique thus proved useful for hearing aid selection. In the validation process, aided auditory/verbal behaviors were evaluated to demonstrate the benefits/limitations of each infant's listening abilities.