2023 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Conference

March 5-7, 2023 • Cincinnati, OH

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10/24/2016  |   9:10 AM - 10:10 AM   |  How Do We Decide if a Cochlear Implant or a Hearing Aid is More Appropriate for an Infant with a Severe-to-Profound Hearing Loss?: Cortical Evaluation in the Management of a Hearing-Impaired Infant   |  BGPOP Building 402/403/404

How Do We Decide if a Cochlear Implant or a Hearing Aid is More Appropriate for an Infant with a Severe-to-Profound Hearing Loss?: Cortical Evaluation in the Management of a Hearing-Impaired Infant

The coverage of Universal Neonatal Hearing Screening in Australia is now higher than 97%. In Australia, fitting infants with hearing aids at the age of three months is becoming common, and there is a need for an objective method to assess the success of these hearing aid fittings. Where it is shown that hearing aid fittings are not providing enough benefit, the child may be better suited to cochlear implants. The cortical evoked response can be a useful tool in such cases, and several innovations developed by the team at the National Acoustic Laboratories have made the technique viable. The equipment uses an automatic detection system to identify the response, which reduces the need for expertise in recognition of persons carrying out the assessment. Speech sounds are used as stimuli, which enable the responses from low, mid and high frequency speech sounds to be evaluated. Special active electrodes are used to reduce the effects of electrical noise. The child’s attention is distracted by use of a television monitor with appropriate materials. The HearLab equipment is available in a package that incorporates all these necessary features. The general morphology of results for a group of hearing-impaired infants was presented. The automatic detection of responses by the equipment was as good as the recognition of responses by a panel of experts. The effect of amplification was seen in the change in the thresholds obtained by the technique. The effects of Auditory Neuropathy Spectrum Disorder on the responses were also investigated. This presentation describes some case studies that show that the technique can be used to indicate when hearing aids are not providing sufficient benefit and that cochlear implants may be a better alternative.

  • Selection of the most appropriate device for infant with severe to profound hearing loss
  • Understanding the use of the cortical evoked response as an evaluation tool
  • Understanding the features of the HearLab system

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Presenters/Authors

Philip Newall (), Atune Hearing, philip.newall@ridbc.org.au;
Professor Newall is employed as a senior audiologist by Attune Hearing in Australia. He was involved in establishing academic programs for audiologists in the Philippines, Manila and Beijing. He is Fellow of the Audiological Society of Australia and a Fellow of the American Academy of Audiology. Philip Newall has research interests in clinical audiology, especially in the area of amplification for the severely and profoundly hearing-impaired and in the epidemiology of deafness and tinnitus. He has written more than 100 articles in scientific journals and has been a chief investigator on research grants worth over A$3 million. He has made over 130 presentations at conferences in Australia and overseas. He is an Emeritus Professor at Macquarie University, and a Conjoint Professor at the University of Newcastle, and a Professorial Fellow at the Renwick Centre in the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children in Sydney, Australia.


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Harvey Dillon (), National Acoustic Laboratories, harvey.dillon@nal.gov.au;
A/Prof. Harvey Dillon joined the National Acoustic Laboratories (NAL) in 1979 and until 1986 he performed research into speech discrimination testing, audiological testing in sound fields, speech processing for hearing aids, hearing aid fitting methods, and the acoustics of hearing aid coupling systems. From 1986 to 1990 he held various positions (including Chief Engineer and Development Manager) in the operational area of NAL (now called Australian Hearing). From 1990 he headed the Hearing Aid Research Section of NAL and in 2000 became the Director of NAL. After completing an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering, A/Prof. Dillon was awarded a PhD for research into psychoacoustics. His current research interests are centred on the assessment and remediation of auditory processing disorders and electrophysiological assessment methods, but he finds captivating all the research and development undertaken by NAL. A/Prof. Dillon has lectured extensively in the areas of acoustics, psychoacoustics, and hearing aids in the audiology program at Macquarie University, at which institution he is an adjunct professor. From 1991 to 2007, Dr Dillon was also a Deputy Director of the Cooperative Research Centre for Cochlear Implant and Hearing Aid Innovations.


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Bram Van Dunn (), National Acoustic Laboratories, Bram.VanDun@nal.gov.au;
Dr Bram Van Dun is the senior research electrophysiologist at the National Acoustic Laboratories (NAL) in Sydney, Australia since 2009. His current research involves auditory brainstem responses and cortical auditory evoked potentials, translated clinically towards hearing threshold, hearing aid and cochlear implant fitting evaluation in hearing-impaired infants and adults, and objective assessment of spatial processing disorders


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