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Background
With the implementation of newborn hearing screening across Australia babies are being diagnosed with auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder (ANSD) at a much earlier age.
The challenge with the diagnosis of ANSD is that patients show extremely variable outcomes. Some babies eventually show near normal hearing thresholds with good speech discrimination, some perform satisfactorily with the fitting of hearing aids, and some experience such significant distortion of speech that they are considered for cochlear implantation.
Detail
The aim of this project is to use objective measures of auditory pathway function to try to predict which babies may have more difficulty with hearing and speech discrimination so that the most appropriate early intervention is provided at a critical time of speech and language development.
Subproject: Cortical auditory evoked potentials (CAEPs) were performed on a group of babies within the first 12 months of life who passed their newborn hearing screen and a group who were diagnosed with ANSD. At the age of five, formal tests of speech discrimination ability will be performed and compared to the original electrophysiological test results. If a predictive relationship is identified between these measures, a clinical test will be developed to assist audiologists with the management of babies with ANSD.
Project leadership
![[title]](http://www.hearingcrc.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/profile_260/content/people/profile-mcmahon.jpg "Dr Catherine McMahon")
Project Team
Kirsten Gardner-Berry, Vijay Narne, Karen Bate, Aseel Almeqbel, Harvey Dillon, Suzanne Purdy
