Newborn Hearing Screening Units

One of the services that the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Audiology team frequently performs is newborn hearing screenings. Pediatric trained audiologists conduct outpatient infant hearing testing for babies that fail their newborn hearing screening at their birth hospital, as well as testing for inpatients in the Children’s NICUs.

In the United States, about 3 out of 1,000 babies are born with hearing loss. Hearing loss can have a profound impact on the development of a child, and the earlier that a hearing loss is able to be identified and treated, the better the overall outcome for the child. In 2023, the Children’s Audiology team identified a total of 262 children with permanent hearing loss. 

New infant hearing screening equipment will allow Children’s to perform a specialized type of testing on the very youngest babies. This new equipment will allow us to assess middle ear function in infants under 7 months of age, which is critical in determining whether middle ear fluid or congestion could be affecting the test results. This specific equipment may also be used to test children with very narrow ear canals, such as children with Downs Syndrome.  

Bone Anchored Hearing Aid Skull Simulators

Another service that Children’s Audiology provides for our patients is a specialized type of hearing aid called a Bone Anchored Hearing Aid.  These Bone Anchored Hearing Aids, more commonly referred to as BAHAs, are typically worn on a headband called a softband or may be surgically implanted by an ENT physician.  BAHAs differ from traditional hearing aids in that they allow children to hear via vibrations from the device.  Children that are born without external ears or without ear canals but have normally developed inner ears or cochlea’s are typically appropriate candidates for a BAHA device.  Until recently, there was no way to verify that the amount of volume provided by the BAHA device was sufficient to allow infants and young children to have appropriate auditory access for spoken language development. 

The upcoming best practice of care for pediatric patients that use BAHA devices on softbands is to verify that their devices are providing enough gain by using a new piece of equipment called a skull simulator. Devices will be used at outpatient clinic locations in order to ensure that the audiologists are appropriately programming BAHA devices for our infants and young children.  It is critical to ensure that these babies are receiving adequate access to sound so that they can develop spoken language.  In 2023 alone, 109 children were fit at Children’s Audiology with a new BAHA device. There is also a large number of patients coming through our clinics each day that already are fit with a BAHA device but are coming back to see their audiologist for a BAHA follow up visit.  These skull simulators would be used for hundreds of patients each year to ensure that they have adequate access to sound.