ABSTRACT
Contents Introduction .............................................................................................................................716 What Is a Pediatric Hearing Loss? .............................................................................................717 Who Diagnoses a Pediatric Hearing Loss? ................................................................................718 Scope of Practice for Audiology ................................................................................................719 Children with Hearing Disorders .............................................................................................721 Basic Anatomy and Physiology of Hearing for the Life Care Planner ....................................... 722 Pediatric Hearing Assessment .................................................................................................. 724
Behavioral Testing Measures ................................................................................................725 Speech Audiometry ..............................................................................................................725 Auditory Brainstem Response Testing ................................................................................. 726 Acoustic Immittance ........................................................................................................... 726 Otoacoustic Emissions ........................................................................................................ 727 Hearing Screening .............................................................................................................. 728
Age at Onset of Hearing Loss .................................................................................................. 728 Mild and Unilateral Hearing Loss in Children ........................................................................ 728 Auditory Processing Disorders ................................................................................................. 730
Assessment of Auditory Processing Disorders by a Pediatric Audiologist ............................. 730 Auditory Processing Disorder Management by a Pediatric Audiologist .................................731
Large Vestibular Aqueduct Disorders ........................................................................................732 (Re)Habilitation .......................................................................................................................733
Introduction Approximately 42 million people in the United States are a•ected by a communicative disorder, and 28 million individuals have a hearing loss. ’e prevalence of communicative disorders in the United States is expected to increase for a number of reasons. First, the population of the United States continues to grow; thus, more communication problems present themselves simply as an artifact of population growth. Second, people are living longer, and with increasing age comes increasing opportunity to experience diseases and trauma that may result in a communicative disorder. ’ird, an increasing number of at-risk babies are being born, and increasing numbers of children have a communication problem due to trauma.
