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Yesterday I attended the launch of the new National Commissioning Framework for Hearing Loss Services.
This is a document was developed by members of the Hearing And Deafness Alliance (a group of representatives from professional organisations, charity sector and patient groups) with NHS England and follows the launch of the Government’s cross-sector and cross-departmental Action Plan on Hearing Loss last year.
The new framework is aimed at supporting NHS commissioners in ensuring they understand the importance of services for people with hearing loss and the potential impact of un-managed hearing and communication difficulties. The document clearly indicates that it covers the whole age range from birth onwards but understandably given the much larger numbers involved, does have some emphasis on age-related hearing loss. But section 3.1 does make it clear that CCGs should be familiar with their commissioning responsibilities in relation to hearing and wider audiology services and appendix 3 helpfully clarifies the responsibilities of CCGs, NHS England and PHE in the complex environment of commissioning the various parts of a child’s audiology journey. Finally, section 8 stresses the need to move towards more outcome based commissioning and the crucial role of service specifications in setting out the key requirements for delivery of the service.
I was therefore very pleased be invited onto the Children’s Services Content Group and to lead on developing a model service specification for commissioners on paediatric audiology services along with a series of suggested outcome measures for children plus service performance outcomes, that services and commissioners can use to measure quality of the service. A link to this document is contained within the Framework or can be downloaded here. This is the first time we have had children’s outcomes used as commissioning measures of quality and we look forward to feedback and developing these further.
I’m now looking forward to working with NDCS colleagues to share this suite of documents widely with our networks, including service professionals and commissioners.
Weekend for teenagers with acquired, progressive, or late-onset deafness
Posted on: January 26, 2013
The new NDCS weekend for teenagers with acquired, progressive, or late-onset deafness and their families has been a while in the planning and last weekend it finally arrived. As did the snow! Which was a shame because it meant three families weren’t able to make it but for the ones who made it through the snow I’m sure they got a huge amount out of the weekend.
Over the weekend we ran three programmes – one for the adults, one for the deaf teenagers, and one for their siblings. There were opportunities to share experiences, information sessions, and fun activites all in a relaxed environment. I led an information session with all the teenagers and their siblings on the ear, hearing and deafness. All the teenagers had become deaf in the last 18 months and all were using hearing aids or cochlear implants. Many young deaf people know very little about their own hearing or the technology they use and large numbers told NDCS they want more information on these topics. I have often assumed this to be that, as audiologists and other professionals working with deaf children, we’ve often concentrated on sharing information with families – especially in the early years – and forget to share with children directly as they get older or maybe assume they’ve picked it all up along the way somehow. I was pretty surprised that the teenagers at this weekend appeared to know very little because they were all older when their hearing started to change and we might assume they’d been more involved in their own care. So I thought I’d share an outline of how our information session ran and maybe it will help local services to think about something similar for their kids or inspire new ideas – let me know!
I have a small overnight suitcase that is packed with demonstration equipment. I have a large model of the ear, some laminated diagrams, an otoscope, some old hearing aids on stetoclips, dummy hearing aid and cochlear implants, disposable ear plugs, and my iPad with some ‘drag and drop’ build-an-ear apps. We all sat round in a circle on the floor and basically tipped out all this stuff! They could handle anything they wanted and ask any questions they had. They all loved having a look in one anothers ears and were fascinated by the internal parts of a cochlear implant. The hearing siblings tried out earplugs and listened to hearing aids and they thought this was helpful in understanding their brother or sister’s deafness. A little competition broke out trying to build parts of the ear the quickest on the iPad. We talked wax, how sound moves through the ear, and using the ‘T’ programme to connect to Bluetooth streamers and iPods. Second big surprise was that not one of the teenagers had the ‘T’ programme activated in their hearing aids. In fact one lad told me he’d asked his audiologist for it at his last apointment and had been told it ‘wasn’t necessary because you only have a moderate hearing loss’. Given that the main benefits of using the ‘T’ setting are little to do with the level of hearing and much more to do with overcoming limitations in hearing aid technology (such as hearing sounds clearly that come from a distance, reducing distracting background noise, and enabling use of audio equipment without the need for headphones) this seemed like missing an important opportunity and we’ve encouraged him to ask again!
My session was just one part of the weekend so it was lovely to hear their views at the end when they completed an evaluation activity and shared what they’d done and learned throughout the weekend with their parents (and vice-versa!)
They loved these ear anatomy post it notes (available from Blue Tree Publishing) that they used to write down some of the things they’d learned in my session! And we’re going to be developing some resources for kids who lose their hearing and their families to help address some of the issues they raised – watch this space…
Meningitis & childhood deafness
Posted on: November 6, 2012
One in 10 children who survive meningitis are deafened as a result of the illness. Great strides have been made in vaccination for some types of meningitis including the vaccination for Hib (Haemophilus influenzae type b) which was the biggest cause of meningitis in children under the age of 5 years and a major cause of deafness. The Hib vaccine was introduced in 1992 into the childhood vaccination schedule. However, even after this, hearing problems remain one of the most common after effects of bacterial meningitis. Other forms of meningitis which are not vaccine preventable, and which pose a significant risk of hearing loss, are group B streptococcal and E coli meningitis, which together account for most cases of meningitis in newborn babies (neonatal meningitis). This means that health professionals working in paediatrics must remain vigilant and refer all babies and children who have had meningitis to audiology for hearing tests, and audiologists must continue to educate their local teams about the risks.
In November 2009 I spoke at the ‘After Meningitis Conference’ in London hosted by the Meningitis Trust on the ‘Impact and Challenges of Hearing Loss Following Meningitis’. I have uploaded the slides below for those that are interested in the facts and figures, and listed the references below.
Resources, references & further information
- Balance and balance disorders factsheet, NDCS, 2008
- Meningitis and childhood deafness, NDCS/The Meningitis Trust, 2012
- Meningitis & Hearing Loss (Deafness Research UK, 2005)
- NDCS Family Weekend for teenagers with acquired and late-onset deafness
- NHS Choices Meningitis, 2010
- Guidelines for surveillance and audiological referral of infants & children following the newborn hearing screen (NHSP Clinical Group, 2012)
- Fortnum HM., Davis AC., Hearing impairment in children after bacterial meningitis: incidence and resource implications. Br J Audiol. 1993 Feb;27(1):43-52.
- Fortnum HM, Summerfield AQ, Marshall DH, Davis AC, Bamford JM (2001). Prevalence of permanent childhood hearing impairment in the United Kingdom and implications for universal neonatal hearing screening: questionnaire based ascertainment study. Brit Med J 323(7312), 536-40
- Richardson, MP., Reid, A., Tarlow, MJ., Rudda, PT., Hearing loss during bacterial meningitis. Archives of Disease in Childhood 1997;76:134-138
A while back I blogged about a new NDCS weekend families with a child who has mild, moderate or unilateral deafness that I was involved in delivering. We are continuing to develop our famly weekend programme and are really delighted to announce a further two new ones…
You & your deaf child: a weekend for deaf parents & their families which will be held 30th November – 2nd December in Reading (for deaf children aged 2.5 – 11 years)
and Weekend for young people with acquired, progressive or late-onset deafness & their families (aged 11 – 16 years and who have developed their hearing loss in the last 18 months) from 18 – 20th January in Reading.
All events are free of charge! You can find out more about these events, other weekend events for families, and details on booking here. And if you know of any families that these would be suitable for please pass on the information to them. Thank you!
