Pediatric care is a very important part of medical care and the special attention required for performance of even the basic procedures increases due to the younger age and higher risk of the patients. If you are looking for pediatric diagnostics Rockville MD, it would be good to know what sort of procedures you could be looking forward to. Having your child prepared for what they might be undergoing is a good way to make the process smoother. While your doctor will advise on the exact pediatric audiology procedure and hearing aid services you need to go through, here are some things you should know.
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Pediatric Audiology is Different from Adult Audiology
A major part of any medical diagnostic procedure is to ask the patient questions and to then establish a starting point based on their answers. The same method cannot be used with children as they are either unable to answer the questions properly or can’t answer them at all. This may provide misleading information which is why a number of special hearing evaluation methods are employed for diagnosing children.
Purposes of Tests
There are various tests that would be carried out by an audiologist to determine whether a child has hearing loss. These tests also provide other important information like which part of the auditory system is actually damaged and what type of hearing loss the child is suffering from. These tests also provide insight on the extent of hearing loss. Information about what pitches or frequencies are affected is also gained through these various tests.
Types of Tests
Tympanometry is a test of the middle-ear function which doesn’t measure hearing loss per se, rather measuring the energy transmission levels in the ear canal. This is done by applying variable amounts of pressure to the eardrum. This gives information on the condition of the middle ear, the conduction of the middle ear bones, and the mobility of the eardrum.
Otoacoustic Emissions (OAEs) are small sounds made by the inner ear if it is functioning correctly. The absence of any of the two types of OAE (DPOAE and TOAE) is easily measured in all children and is a very important part of an ear test.
Behavioral Audiometry is used to for older children (starting at around 3½ years of age). Children are taught to take part in Conditioned Play Audiometry (CPA) which is a process where they are taught to perform an action when they hear a certain sound. The audiologists measure the various reactions and determine the extent of the hearing loss through them.
Audiological monitoring is performed on children who have hearing loss from birth or later on-set hearing loss. This method involves monitoring their hearing aids and taking feedback from the caregivers through questionnaires. Other methods such as aided speech perception are used to measure the child’s condition over time.
So there you have it. Once you know what you’re heading in to, getting the right hearing aid services and pediatric diagnostics in Rockville, MD will become that much easier.
