Pediatric Ear Nose and Throat

All babies receive a newborn hearing test after birth, but if they fail, they’ll be referred to pediatric audiologists like Dr. Alicia Moore. “Usually the parents are upset you know rightfully so. They want to know why? Why does my child have hearing loss?”

She’ll take the baby into a soundproof room and do a series of tests including the auditory brainstem response test. “We put electrodes on their head and behind their ears, and then we put little earphones in their ears, and then we get the response through the electrodes through the brain stem response,” said Dr. Moore.

The baby should be seen by an audiologist within the first month of being born. “The smaller they are, the more likely they are to sleep deep enough for us to get the test, because they have to be in a deep sleep for the test,” said Dr. Moore. Most pass, but if they fail it could be from genetic or hereditary hearing loss or because they may have fluid in their ear. “Children are very susceptible to middle ear problems, so they might need to get tubes in their ear to drain out the fluid.”

If they fail and it looks like there is permanent nerve damage, the baby would be recommended for a hearing aid, but they would need medical clearance from an ear, nose, and throat doctor first. “Just because speech and language is so critical to hearing and speech and language development, you want them to be hearing all of the speech sounds so they can be able to produce them properly,” said Dr. Moore. You can learn more about pediatric audiology by searching for it on Leehealth.org.