Hearing aid review clinics
We use a range of measures and assessments when fitting or
reviewing your child hearing aid(s). Not all of these will be done
at every appointment. They are designed to be age/developmentally
appropriate for your child and usually children enjoy attending the
appointments.
Hearing Tests
At the beginning of each appointment, we will usually try to
test your child's hearing across the important speech frequency
range. For babies (8 months+) and young children, we may use the
test with moving toys and lights in the cabinet and as your child
gets older we may play a hearing game. For school age
children, we may ask them to press a button in response to the
sounds we present.
We may use your child's earmoulds, which are connected to the
audiometer, so that your child can listen for the different pitches
of sound that we test.
Earmoulds
Your audiologist will look at the condition and fit of
your child's earmould(s) and if they have no wax impressions will
be taken for new earmoulds if needed.
Otoscopy and Tympanometry
We will look in your child's ears (otoscopy) and takes
measurements from the eardrum (tympanometry). These help in
identifying middle ear congestion, perforations, wax blockages all
which may affect your child's hearing.
Fine tuning of the hearing aid(s)
We try to fit hearing aids as accurately as possible. To do
this, we take a measurements from your child's ear using a small
probe tube (these are called real ear measurements). The tube picks
up the sound going through the earmould and from this we are able
to get a measure of the size of the ear. This is especially
important for babies, who have very small ears. Knowing the
size of your child's ear helps us to set up the level of sound that
is needed from the hearing aid.
For babies and young children, this can be a very quick measure
- we put the probe tube in the ear, then the earmould, press a
button and then your child is free to go and play. For older
children, we may try to carry out the measurements whilst they sit
in front of a speaker.
Speech tests
It is important to check how your child's hearing aid(s) help
them to hear speech sounds.
- For young children, we use a test where we play different
speech sounds to them whilst wearing their hearing aids. These are
sounds like "shh", "ssss", "eeee", "oooh" and "aaah"; we check to
see if they are able to hear the difference between the
sounds. We may also try an interactive game(McCormick Toy
Test), involving small toys which can sound similar
(e.g. horse and house). Children are required to point to different
toys when asked.
- For older children, we may use a computerised speech test and
ask them to repeat single words or sentences that are heard through
a speaker whilst wearing their hearing aid(s).
Checking for loudness discomfort
If changes are made to the hearing aids, we may play some loud
toys (e.g. musical instruments) or loud noises to your child to
check that the hearing aids are set correctly and are not causing
distress to your chilld.
Hearing and listening questionnaires
We may ask you to fill in a questionnaire about your child's
hearing and listening. This allows us to monitor your child's
hearing and communication development with hearing aids.
