Sujita Kanthan1, Genelle Cook1, Therese Gold2, Trong Nguyen2
1Jim Patrick Audiology Centre, Royal Institiute for Deaf and Blind Children, North Rocks, Australia,
2Interacoustics, North Ryde, Australia
These case studies highlight the need for innovative thinking, to utilise available resources/technology outside their scope of use. Conducting behavioural assessments and obtaining reliable results in children with additional needs is a challenging endeavour.
Electrophysiological assessments under general anaesthetic is an option but not viable for every child. Certain medical contraindications or personal circumstance (like lack of Medicare) poses challenges for testing under anaesthetic. For these families ruling out hearing loss as a contributing factor in their child’s condition is crucial, it furthers them into their journey to obtain a differential diagnosis.
Sera with ABRIS is an automated ABR screener that was designed for the purpose of newborn hearing screening. It uses CE-Chirp stimulus, hence compensates for cochlear travel time*, resulting in response amplitude that is twice the size to a click stimulus response. It is quick as it uses binaural stimulation and weighted averaging algorithm which helps combat against noise in the recording. These features make ABRIS ideal to be used for screening older children who for one reason or another are unable to do a behavioural assessment.
These case studies will showcase how thinking outside the box, and using Sera with ABRIS as an additional objective measure helped to rule out a significant hearing loss in these older children. Hence avoiding the need to do testing under general anaesthetic.
* Almeida, M.G., Sena-Yoshinaga, T.A., Côrtes-Andrade, I.F., Sousa, M.N.C., & Lewis, D.R. (2014). Automated auditory brainstem responses with CE-Chirp® at different intensity levels. Audiol Commun Res, 19(2), 117-123.
Biography:
I have an undergraduate degree in Speech and Hearing & a Masters in Audiology from All India Institute of Speech & Hearing in India. I migrated to Australia in 2010 and since then have worked as an Audiologist in diagnostic clinics and in research. I am currently working as Paediatric Audiologist at Jim Patrick Audiology Centre, RIDBC and in Audiology Department, Sydney Children’s Hospital.