![]() Nowadays it accounts for between 10 to 15% of all hearing loss diagnoses.įortunately, children who have ANSD can still acquire strong communication and language skills with the help of therapy, medical devices and visual communication techniques. Although signs can begin at any age, the vast majority of those who have ANSD are born with the condition and come to be diagnosed within the first few months of life.Īs research into the disorder becomes better and better, the number of children diagnosed with it is ever greater. It occurs when the signal between the inner ear and the brain becomes distorted.Īlthough the direct reasons for ANSD are not well understood, it can affect premature children and those with a strong hereditary history of the condition more often. ![]() Many parents have had to fight to obtain the services and equipment our children need because of lack of understanding of the disorder.Hearing loss can be a relatively common issue for newborn children among the varying types, auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder (ANSD) is perhaps one of the most disruptive. We must educate ourselves about this disorder called Auditory Neuropathy Spectrum Disorder so that we can educate others, including many professionals that work with hearing impaired children. We must become case managers, advocates,and educators for our children. As of 2008, there are several children with AN that now have bilateral cochlear implants that are progressing wonderfully with them.Īs parents, it becomes difficult to decide which path to follow with our children, especially with all the disagreement among professionals. Seminars for all professionals and parents of ANSD children are being held throughout the world to promote and encourage understanding of the disorder and it’s management. As the number of successfully implanted AN children grows, there are more and more referrals for cochlear implantation evaluations being made. There is professional disagreement over the use of cochlear implants in patients with ANSD, however there has been a trend to implant these children based on poor language gains. There is current research stating that hearing aids are useful if about 50% of the cases but again, this is disputed among professionals. Some facilities use hearing aids with AN children with limited success. Hearing aid use with ANSD has been heavily debated topic among professionals from the beginning. At the Guidelines Development Conference on the Identification and Management of Infants with Auditory Neuropathy the consensus was to adopt the term “auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder” (ANSD) to describe this long debated and multi-faceted disorder. Because of this continued conflict a panel of experts came together at the International Newborn Hearing Screening Conference (June 19-21, 2008 in Como, Italy) for the purpose of developing guidelines for identification and management of infants with what had been called Auditory Neuropathy and/or Auditory Dys-synchrony. Unfortunately, nearly 20 years later parents continue to recieve conflicting information. Many parents of children diagnosed with AN have received conflicting information and advice about diagnosis, management, and recommendations as to which mode of communication they should use with their children. In time, the concensus was that the nerve was mis-firing, or dys-synchronously firing so this disorder has also been called Auditory Dys-synchrony.īecause AN was not a typical hearing loss it is misunderstood by many audiologists, speech language pathologists, and teachers of the deaf. The term auditory neuropathy was coined by Arnold Starr, MD, a neurologist at UCI believed that the nerve was damaged. In the early 1990’s a group of professionals gathered to discuss this unique group of patients (my son was one of them). Audiologists were quite perplexed with this finding. The otoacoutic emissions, signifying that the outer hair cells of the cochlea were functional, were found to be present in patients that, based on the booth and ABR testing, were hearing impaired. At this time there was a unique group of hearing impaired patients with unusual test results. The diagnosis of Auditory Neuropathy (AN) started emerging in the late 1980’s with the addition of otoacoustic emissions testing to the battery of tests to diagnose hearing loss. ![]() History Of Auditory Neuropathy Spectrum Disorder ![]()
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