Clinic Blog 5 - Wk. 5

Today in clinic i saw a 20 year old male with down syndrome. He had severe stensosis and had bilateral surgery to expand his ear canals. Otoscopy revealed some debris in his right ear that made visualizing the TM tricky. The left ear was clear. Tymps were normal in the right ear with some negative pressure in the left, resulting in a Type C. Speech awareness thresholds were found to be around 35 for both ears. Puretones were also done. He was right along the boarder of a flat, mild hearing loss. The option of amplification was mentioned and explained to his mother. She said at this time, if he was "on the fence" she would like to wait since he had so many other things going on. It was recommended that he return so we are able to monitor his hearing loss in the future. A second audiogram should be performed if he does return for amplification in order to make sure our test results were reliable. He was an absolute joy to have in clinic. At the end of the evaluation his mom asked him which girl he wanted to go with (the speech girls were there to take him back upstairs) and he pointed to Dr. Payne. He made everybody laugh and was a great client !!!!

Here is an article I found on audiologic assessment of children with down syndrome. Check it out :)

Kile, J. (1996). Audiologic Assessment of Children With Down Syndrome, American Journal of Audiology, 5, 44-52.

http://aja.asha.org/cgi/reprint/5/1/44?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=down+synrome&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT