How Is Hearing Loss Treated? 

The kind of  treatment depends on the type of hearing loss, how severe it is, and the child's other needs. Common treatments include medicine, operations, hearing aids, or assistive listening devices, which emphasize voices and help kids hear better in noisy settings. With treatment, most kids will be able to hear normally again. 

Hearing aids are kind of like tiny amplifiers. They help someone hear sounds better and can even pick up the sounds so that what kids hear  is clearer. Hearing aids deliver amplified sounds (via sound vibrations) from the eardrum and middle ear  to the  inner ear or cochlea. Hearing  aid technology is available that  can adjust the volume of sounds automatically. 

For some kids who can't hear or understand words even with the help  of hearing aids, there is  a device called a cochlear implant (say: ko-klee-ur im-plant). This  is a very tiny piece of electronic equipment that is put into  the cochlea during  an operation. It takes over the job of the damaged  or destroyed hair cells  in the cochlea by turning sounds  into electrical signals that stimulate  the hearing nerve directly. 

Learning and Communicating 

A kid with hearing loss  may attend  a special school, special classes within  a regular school, or may be part  of a regular classroom. Depending on how severe their  hearing loss is, some kids may work with audiologists or speech-language pathologists to help them develop their hearing  and speaking skills. 

Some people with hearing loss may need to use special techniques like these to communicate: 

• speechreading, which involves looking closely at a person's lips, facial expressions, and gestures  to help figure out spoken words 
• American Sign Language, or ASL, which is a language of hand movements that allows deaf people  to communicate with one another without speaking 
• Cued Speech and Signed Exact English, which use handshapes  to translate what's being said. Both are meant  to be used with spoken language to help people understand anything they can't comprehend through lip reading. 

What about talking on  the phone? Thanks  to a telecommunication  device (also called  a TDD),  a conversation can be typed out instead of spoken. The messages appear on a special screen or on a printout. 

You might wonder how a hearing-impaired person could see a movie or watch TV. Closed-captioned TV shows  and movies provide text at  the bottom of  the screen, so people with  hearing loss can read along  to follow the action. 

So hearing-impaired kids can go to school, talk on the phone,  and watch  a movie.  If that sounds a lot like a typical kid's life, you're right! 

Notes: Dr. Nelson Crumfield

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EditText of this page (last edited June 26, 2010)