Do children with unilateral congenital deafness need hearing aids?

A parent asked, “my child’s right ear hearing is normal, but the left ear hearing is severe hearing loss. Can I do without hearing aids?”

My reply is: “we need to select the right hearing aid for the left ear as early as possible.” Why?

Reason 1:

The normal range of children’s hearing is 0-15 dB HL; once the threshold exceeds 15 dB HL, it will affect their speech development. Children with congenital deafness should have early diagnosis, early hearing compensation and early language rehabilitation. In the case of hearing loss of children’s left ear, hearing aids should be selected as early as possible for intervention, and language training should be carried out if necessary.

Reason 2:

Although hearing impairment has different effects on children due to different time, degree and nature of hearing impairment, whether it is pre lingual or post lingual deafness, hearing loss will have various adverse effects on the normal development of children’s conversation in terms of sound quality, clarity, language skills learning, educational achievements, intelligence and emotion, personality and other social aspects.

Reason 3:

What’s wrong with single ear listening? In addition to not being able to hear clearly in a complex environment, not being able to locate the sound source, it will also affect children’s ability to receive high frequency (consonant), thus affecting speech acquisition. Long term single ear listening may lead to “hearing deprivation effect”, and the speech recognition rate of non hearing aid ear (left ear in the case) will be reduced.

The right ear has normal hearing and can pick up the sound on the right side sensitively; the left ear has severe hearing loss and cannot hear many kinds of sounds; at the same time, due to the “head shadow effect”, the right ear can only pick up part of the sound on the left side; if you want to hear the sound on the left side clearly, you need to turn the right ear to the left side to listen.

Reason 4:

So what’s the benefit of listening with both ears at the same time?

1. Improve speech recognition, especially in noisy environment;

2. Improve the ability to identify the direction of sound source;

3. There is a sense of balance between two ears;

4. It can reduce some gain of hearing aid;

5. Eliminate the acoustic effect of “head shadow”;

6. Enhance the ability of receiving high frequency (consonant);

7. It can prevent the auditory deprivation effect and protect the good ear;

8. Improve the “binaural fusion” effect, improve the stereo sense and sound quality of the voice.

Reason 5:

The brain processes sound asymmetrically. The left side of the brain has the language area of the lateral fissure, which is the main area of auditory processing; some people think that when the nerve signal is uploaded, it will be transmitted to the opposite brain, so the right ear is the dominant ear, as long as the right ear can hear the sound (the right ear hearing in the case is normal).

In fact, the primary auditory cortex is also asymmetric in the processing of sound. It was found that the primary auditory cortex of both sides of the brain was very active, but the time change was mainly excited on the left side, while the frequency change was on the right side. – in fact, it’s best to hear the sound in the left ear and the right ear at the same time.

Warm reminder:

There is evidence that the infants who were diagnosed with hearing loss before 6 months of age and immediately received the intervention were significantly better than the infants who were later found and intervened in terms of language development, vocabulary acceptance and expression, social emotional development, and these differences were not related to the degree of hearing and communication mode.

Jinghao hearing aid reminder: hearing aid wearing requires professional “matching”, so it is very important to choose a professional hearing aid matching center and a hearing aid tester! If you have any hearing problems, you can call Jinghao for consultation, or come to the matching center for experience. Hearing aid free consultation Tel.: + 86-18566295705