Our world revolves around communication. It is essential for all of us to connect and get our messages across. This starts the moment we are born. Our senses enable us to appreciate the environment around us and hearing is an important medium, which helps us in the process. But not all of us are born with the gift of hearing.
Every day, 33 children are born with hearing loss, making it the most common congenital condition in the United States. For many of these babies, the everyday sounds many of us take for granted go unheard. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), one to three of every 1,000 newborns have some degree of hearing impairment. And 95 percent of babies with hearing loss are born to normal parents.
The most important time for a child to learn a language is in the first three years of life. In fact, children begin learning speech and language in the first six months of life. Research suggests that children with hearing loss who get help early develop better language skills than those who don’t. The earlier you know about a child’s hearing loss, the sooner you can make sure your child benefits from interventions that will help him learn to successfully communicate.
Take the first step and talk to a hearing and balance specialist who can provide personal attention and care, working closely with patients to design solutions suited to your child’s needs.
You may want to consider VRP Medical Center where they boast Ear Unit as one of the most comprehensive, complete and up-to-date centers for hearing and balance in the country.
It has a workhorse for hearing evaluation, a heavy-duty clinical audiometer from Interacoustics (distributed locally by Manila Hearing Aid Center) for pure tone audiometry, speech audiometry, play audiometry, hearing aid trial and aided audiometry. The new tympanometer (Interacoustics AT 235 ), also from Interacoustics, has a complete array of testing middle ear function including tympanometry, stapedial reflex and Eustachian tube function, and is regarded as the newest edition of tympanometers, of which only a handful of hospitals and hearing centers have.
Electrophysiologic tests such as evoked auditory potentials (auditory brainstem response (ABR) and auditory steady state response (ASSR) (Natus Nav Pro) whether air-conducted and bone-conducted is also available for the evaluation of children with various degrees of hearing impairment. More importantly, the test can also detect severe-to-profound hearing losses, and can also be used in adults for site-of-lesion testing or those suspected of having a retro-cochlear pathology. In addition to the auditory evoked potentials, the machine has additional software for vestibular testing and includes Vestibular Evoked Myogenic Potentials (VEMP) and Electrocochleography (EchOG) (Medical One), an important test for localizing lesions in the labyrinth and for monitoring Meniere’s disease, respectively. For the universal newborn hearing screening program, an automated, portable otoacoustic emissions (OAE) machine is currently in place.
For decades, VRP Medical Center has been lauded for its service and has been chosen as one of the first hospitals where the UNHSP (Universal Newborn Hearing Screening Programme) has been implemented using the platform (computerized versus tablet) for data encoding and transmission to the Newborn Hearing Screening Reference Center. The coverage for newborn hearing screening has increased over the years as babies born inside the hospital are screened for hearing prior to hospital discharge and has consistently followed the quality standards set by the Department of Health (DOH).
For professional advice and related inquiries, visit the VRP Medical Center located at 163 EDSA, 1501 Mandaluyong City or contact (02) 464-9999 or like their Facebook page www.facebook.com/vrpmedicalcenter for regular updates.