PEDIATRIC AUDIOLOGY UNIT

PEDIATRIC AUDIOLOGY UNIT

Hearing is vital to a child's development. Hearing screening tests and after screening early diagnostic evaluations are carried out in this unit. The purpose of newborn hearing screening program is to detect infants with hearing loss in the first three months of life and to make the necessary interventions before six months and to start both instrumentation and educational study. Finding out hearing loss early can give these babies a better chance of developing language, speech, and communication skills. The definitive diagnosis in babies who have failed hearing screening should be made with more advanced methods. Age-appropriate auditory evaluation is performed for the purpose of evaluating hearing loss in infancy and childhood. Hearing evaluation of children is made by using objective and subjective tests appropriate to the age and developmental characteristics of the child. Objective tests include immitansmetric mesurements, TEOAE, DPOAE, ABR, ASSR, Middle and Late latency evaluations with hearing aid and cochlear implant. Subjective hearing tests include pure tone  audiometry evaluations ( ear spesific and free field audiometric evaluations) and speech audiometry.  According to the age of the individual, evaluations are made with Behavioral Observation Audiometry, Visual Reinforcement Audiometry, Conditioned Play Audiometry is selected for appropriate age.