New Hearing Aid Technologies for Hearing-Impaired Children

It is estimated that 13% of children between the ages of 0 and 18 have mild hearing loss. From birth, deafness affects four to six newborns per thousand, according to the latest known data.

When hearing loss impacts speech frequencies and voice perception, children’s language, cognitive and social development is often affected. That’s why hearing health professionals often recommend wearing hearing aids as early as possible to facilitate a child’s development and success in school.

Most hearing aid manufacturers have products for children that meet their particular needs. Not only do they provide a wide range of colours, they also provide technologies and accessories to ensure the devices are used successfully. A new range of hearing aids for children aims to achieve this goal by integrating OpenSound Navigator (OSN) technology.

It’s important to stimulate children’s entire sound environment, because that’s how they discover the world. However, background noise is always present, and it can affect speech comprehension. The goal of OSN is to reduce noise and amplify speech everywhere around the child in order to improve the quality of listening at school or during activities like sports.

Recent studies have shown the benefits of OSN over traditional technologies in children aged 8–16. They demonstrated that OSN lets children understand speech in noise better than omnidirectional systems (which are normally used for pediatric hearing aids). OSN also reduces the effort needed to understand speech in noise.

Other technologies make listening more enjoyable for hearing-impaired teens. For example, Bluetooth-enabled hearing aids can now be paired with accessories that transform them into custom headphones to receive sound from cell phones, tablets or TVs.

Talk to an audioprosthetist to learn more!