Clinic - Week 7

This week in clinic I saw a client who was refered from the SPA 270 screening for a full hearing evaluation. The client did not recall which part of the screening was not passed. Reports of having difficutly hearing in background noise were made. Also, the client reported working at a lawn care business for the past 10 years. Hearing protection has never been worn. A hearing evaluation had never been done.

Video otoscopy was normal, the tympanic membrane was visible and appeared intact. Immittance testing also revealed normal, Type A tympanograms bilaterally. Puretone air conduction testing revealed that his hearing was within the normal limits.

The results were explained to this client. Possible reasons the screening was not passed was because the testing might have taken place in a noisy environment and the screening was not a true measure of the clients hearing. I feel that this is an important thing to rememeber especially when testing infants. So many infants are testing in a noisy, nursery at the hospital which is not a good environment for these tests to take place.

I found this article that talked about the referral of infants and the importance of a timely follow-up. It also lookes at the results of using ABR with infants. CHECK IT OUT :)

http://aja.asha.org/cgi/reprint/15/1/66?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=referrals+&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT

Lieu, J., Karzon, R., Mange, C. (2006) Hearing screening in the neonatal intensive care unit: follow-up of referrals, American Journal of Audiology, 15, 66-74.