Tuesday 2 August 2011

First hearing test

This was our first real medical test of any relevance since Fiona was born.
Sure they did the X-rays for diagnostic purposes and we have been referred for a million things, none of which have of course happened yet...

I read this in Dr. Pauli's file about hypo:

"Problem: Ears and Hearing
Expectations: Many infants and young children with hypochondroplasia will develop recurrent or persistent middle ear dysfunction with conductive hearing loss (although this risk is considerably less than in children with achondroplasia). If not aggressively treated, this may contribute to delays in language and speech development. Middle ear dysfunction is often resistant to medical management.
Monitoring: Behavioral audiometric and tympanometric assessment, first at 9-12 months of age and at least yearly throughout early childhood. One should have a high level of suspicion that middle ear problems are present.
Intervention: Aggressive use of myringotomy and tube placement. If a child needs ventilation tubes, then they should be maintained until 6-8 years of age, since it appears that eustachian tube autonomy typically does not develop until then."

So I naively thought that I would just self-refer for a newborn hearing test just to have a baseline and then return every 6 months or so, I never expected any problems already...

The good news is that she did pass her hearing test, the bad news is that without me saying anything about her condition they could immediately see that there was a lot of negative pressure there and that her Eustachian tubes were quite small. We need to return for the next test in 3 months in the mean time I need to get into the system for a pediatric ENT specialist, so we wouldn't have to wait for months if she will need grommets...
So we shall see...

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