Management of Pediatric Unilateral Sensorineural Hearing Loss / 대한이비인후과학회지

ABSTRACT

Every one of a thousand of neonates is born with unilateral sensorineural hearing loss (UHL) and the prevalence of UHL increases in school aged children due to delayed-onset or acquired HL. Some studies showed that UHL impacted on speech-language development and school performance adversely. Therefore, appropriate intervention for UHL children may be needed. Treatment approach for UHL children can be chosen depending on the degree of HL. Cochlear implantation (CI) provides benefits of binaural hearing including better speech perception in noise and sound localization to children with acquired severe-to-profound UHL. However, children with congenital severe-to-profound UHL and long duration of HL gain the unfavorable benefit from CI. Contralateral routing of signal hearing aid and bone anchored hearing device should not be recommended for young children with UHL because these devices can introduce noise to normal hearing ear and young children are not able to competently monitor their listening environment and to make judgments about when these devices may be appropriate. Conventional hearing aid (HA) has the potential of providing binaural hearing for UHL children with amplifiable hearing and the studies realized the binaural hearing when UHL children wore HA. However adherence to HA is poor because of some reasons including parents' reluctance to fit a HA in the presence of a normal-hearing ear and stigma effect. Long term follow up data of these interventions for UHL children are lacking. So fully informed consent is required during decision making process for UHL children until the concrete guideline of intervention for UHL children is established.