RAPA 2010

30 March 2010

Following the success last year of the first Recent Advances in Paediatric Audiology (RAPA) meeting, which was designed specifically to increase interaction and knowledge sharing between the clinic and the laboratory in the field of paediatric audiology, a second RAPA meeting was held in London in March as part of the NHS National Knowledge Week for Hearing.

Deafness Research UK is committed to encouraging dialogue between researchers and clinicians to identify key areas for research and ways in which research can benefit patients.

The meeting had as its theme the challenges in taking research into practice and was chaired by Professor Dave Moore (Director of the MRC Institute of Hearing Research, Nottingham). It featured speakers from the UK and the USA and covered three areas of research: follow up after early detection of deafness, the critical period for cochlear implantation, and advances in brainstem physiology.

Each session featured two speakers – one presenting from a research perspective and one from a clinical perspective. The speakers included Dr Deborah James (National Biomedical Research Unit in Hearing, Nottingham), Dr Josephine Marriage (UCLEI), Professor Anu Sharma (Colorado University), Dr Helen Cullington (ISVR Southampton), Professor Nina Kraus (Northwestern University) and Dr Andrew Phillips (Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University).

All the presentations and discussions highlighted the need to embed successes in the research laboratory into routine clinical practice, for example, new technologies for measuring auditory brain responses. All the speakers emphasised the importance of audiological follow up in children and of taking a family-centred approach, empowering parents to improve outcomes for children, particularly with new born screening allowing diagnosis of hearing impairments at much younger ages.

This second Recent Advances in Paediatric Audiology meeting was a unique forum in which clinicians and researchers could come together to share knowledge and discuss key issues in this vital area and Deafness Research UK is grateful for the educational grant from GlaxoSmithKline and additional support from Oticon, which made it possible. We intend to disseminate findings from the meeting on a dedicated website and to continue to foster communication between the laboratory and the clinic in this and other fields.