Ms Maria Florencia Montes Roleri1
1Sydney Children's Hospital, Randwick, , Australia
Biography:
Florencia Montes is a diagnostic audiologist with extensive experience in assessing infants referred form UNHS. Florencia is the Head of the Audiology Department at Sydney Children's Hospital
Abstract
Middle ear dysfunction is one of the most common reasons for newborns not passing UNHS, and also one of the common barriers in achieving a diagnosis by 3 months of age, sometimes requiring multiple appointments to complete diagnosis. At our Clinic, around 20% of the babies we diagnose have a CHL.
Bone conduction ABR can characterise the type and degree of the hearing loss, but there are some technical difficulties when performed in infants. Placement and force are very important for accurate threshold determination.
The elastic metal headband used for BC testing in children is not applicable for use in infants due to their small head size, and hence the bone conductor is handheld with a ‘finger pressure’ technique.
The reality of testing babies in the clinical setting, where sometimes babies are at out of hand’s reach from the clinician, means parents need to be instructed on how to hold the BC transducer which may lead to inconsistent pressure or changes in position. It is also tiring and difficult for the clinician to hold the BC in place while at the same time running the test and managing the baby.
At out Clinic we conducted a study to validate our ‘mesh’ technique option. We compared the amplitude of the response for both the ‘finger pressure’ and the ‘mesh’ BC, at 2 K and 500 Hz, at 10 dB above the pass level for those frequencies. Results suggest that the Mesh technique as a valid option for BC testing.