Conductive hearing loss

Carolyn - posted on 01/18/2009

My son Cole is 6 and a half years old. He was born with a folded ear and stenotic (small) ear canals. He has severe hearing loss in his left folded ear and a mild loss in his right ear. I choose to augment his hearing loss with a bone conduction hearing aid when he was 2. He has done great in school and does also use a Fm system with a bone conduction hearing aid in school. Next Monday he is having his first reconstruction surgery. We are excited and nervous. Because his ear is folded the surgeons believe they will have enough cartilage and not need any from his ribs! yeah!!
after this is complete we will decide where to go from there as far as more surgery vs. a BAHA.

Melody - posted on 01/01/2009

Hello! My 8 year old daughter has unilateral hearing loss (due to nerve damage before birth), and a hearing aid would not help her as there is nothing wrong with the "workings" of her ear. She also has problems with localisation, but has adjusted so well, that unless you knew she was hard of hearing, you wouldn't notice anything was amiss. She is quite a loud little girl, and very outgoing. I was devastated when I discovered that she couldn't hear anything from her left ear, but have come to accept that she knows no better, so unfortunately, doesn't know what she is missing. She has an annual hearing test to ensure that all is well with her good ear, and her school does everything to ensure that she has the best possible advantage in class. I believe the only hearing aid that would help her type of hearing loss, would be an implant onto her skull :-(, and that is not an option for us on the UK National Health system.

Karen - posted on 11/14/2008

Hi Kari - thanks for the reply....the long and short of it is that at the moment, because of her outer ear reconstruction, a hearing doesn't fit properly. The behind-the-ear style doesn't stay on, and the in-the-ear style gives her feedback. Ugh!



We are traveling soon to the Los Angeles area to have stage 2 reconstruction on her outer ear that that will fix the problem with hearing aid fit.



Oh - and she is six years old.



Again thank you for the reply. Glad to have found you all!



Karen

Kari - posted on 11/14/2008

How old is she?? Some audiologists may have a loaner aid you could maybe try to see if she would benefit. There is also a FM system the teacher speaks into (like a microphone) and it directly goes to the aid. Something to look into..... Kari