Audiology features
Auditory brainstem implant results in adults and children
Background The auditory brainstem implant (ABI) has been developed from cochlear implant (CI) technology and is indicated for people who have anatomical abnormalities of the cochlea or dysfunction of the auditory nerve. The majority of people who have received an...
Music and cochlear implants
Introduction The introduction of multichannel cochlear implants (CIs) in the early 1980s provided children and adults with severe and profound hearing losses with greatly improved speech perception skills. In this paper, however, I am going to focus on an area...
Cochlear implant referral: how can we do better?
Considerable progress has been made over the last few years in improving access to cochlear implantation (CI) in the UK for children and adults with severe to profound deafness. But we are still not treating children early enough, and we...
European funding for the tinnitus research network TINNET
Over 70 million people in Europe experience tinnitus, and for seven million it creates a debilitating condition. Severe tinnitus is often associated with depression, anxiety and insomnia, resulting in an enormous socio-economic impact [1]. It has been estimated that 13...
Drawing pictures and telling stories: treating tinnitus in childhood
There is increasing awareness that tinnitus is not restricted to adults. Indeed, the available evidence suggests that some experience of tinnitus in children is fairly common [1]. For many, tinnitus has little effect and requires limited or no intervention. For...
Hearing care systems – European examples
In this article, Vice President of the European Federation of Hard of Hearing, Lidia Best, explores the drivers for improvement and change in European hearing care systems. In 2010, the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) issued the EN-15927 European Standard...
Universal newborn hearing screening: a global health perspective
Intuitively, as health professionals, we know that universal newborn hearing screening (UNHS) makes sense. Bolajoko Olusanya outlines how UNHS fits in with global health priorities, as well as illustrating how such programmes can help to deliver additional benefits to communities....
Plasticity with cochlear implants: individual factors in the outcomes
Andrej Kral gives us an overview of neuronal plasticity in congenital hearing loss, and discusses why it is core to our clinical interventions in hearing loss and rehabilitation. The brain is born immature and undergoes extensive shaping during early development....
Central auditory changes in SNHL
Robert Harrison discusses some of the most obvious ways in which cochlear hearing loss has central consequences. It is convenient to classify hearing loss according to the most obvious site of lesion, for example, conductive, cochlear, retro-cochlear, or central hearing...
The future of inner ear drug delivery
The techniques for delivering drugs to the inner ear system are evolving. Jeffrey Harris considers the myths, the facts and the potential for drug delivery innovations and how they can improve tomorrow’s hearing outcomes. The inner ear’s delicate membranous structure,...
Screening for hearing loss with mHealth solutions
With the number of people suffering from hearing loss growing all the time, the need for early detection and intervention is imperative. De Wet Swanepoel discusses two examples of mHealth possibilities for hearing screening which, as a low cost solution,...
A person-centred approach to telehealth
“The time when telehealth was a remote, abstract concept has come to an end”. Deborah Ferrari and Lise Lotte Bundesen discuss how to advance person-centred care in hearing rehabilitation through online tools and training. The time when telehealth was a...
