Recent advances in paediatric audiology
27 May 2009
Deafness Research UK held a groundbreaking children’s audiology forum on 16th March at the New Connaught Rooms in London. Recent advances in paediatric audiology (RAPA) was the first of what is hoped will become an annual event to mark National Knowledge Week for Hearing.
This year the meeting was themed around the challenges in taking research into practice and was supported by an educational grant from GlaxoSmithKline. An international audience of professionals including audiologists, speech and language therapists and researchers attended the talks, which were part of the Newborn Hearing Screening Programme (NHSP) annual conference.
The inaugural meeting brought together for the first time the four major topics of permanent deafness, otitis media, tinnitus and balance problems in children. Dr Anne Mackie, Director of National Screening Programmes for the National Screening Committee introduced the afternoon with a brief retrospective of the effect of universal hearing screening and acknowledged Deafness Research UK’s role in the introduction of the screening programme. Deafness Research UK supported the original laboratory research, the clinical studies that led to the development of this technology and funded the publication of the guidelines for hospitals to use the new test.
Professor Adrian Davis, Director of the NHS Newborn Hearing Screening Programme, gave a talk on the global impact of hearing impairment in children. He highlighted the need for good data to be acquired so that children’s audiological issues can be address with particular focus on bringing equality of opportunity to bear. Professor Christie Yoshinaga-Itano (Boulder, USA) summarised her PhD student Rosalinda Baca’s recent longitudinal study on language and cognitive development in hearing impaired children identified very early compared to later identification.
On the subject of otitis media, Professor Mark Haggard (Cambridge, UK) presented what he termed a ‘causal cascade’ of factors, beginning with winter viruses and leading to the developmental impact of hearing impairment due to middle ear effusion. Dr Maroeska Rovers (Utrecht, NL) then presented a meta-analysis of clinical trials in acute otitis media showing that antibiotics can be justifiably prescribed for some children (e.g. the under-2s) despite the threat of resistance.
Linda Luxon (London, UK) presented a concise and accessible introduction to balance problems in children. The was centred around the causes of such problems and the clinical framework that should be used to assess the children. A key problem highlighted was the difficulty children may have in conveying what’s wrong given a lack of ready vocabulary to explain dizziness, e.g. they might only be able to say they ‘feel funny’.
The final talk of the day was given by Richard Tyler (Iowa City, USA) on the problem of tinnitus in children. There is currently little research in this area, however Professor Tyler gave a very useful overview that included effective methods for getting children to describe the quality of their tinnitus.
