The department only accepts referrals from consultants and hospital departments. General Practitioners or Health Visitors will need to refer to the Community Audiology team (Bridge Park Plaza) whereby initial testing will be completed; if needed, a further referral can be made by Community Audiology to LRI where necessary.
Any child under 3months of age where there is significant risk or concern of a hearing loss will benefit from being referred to the Electro Diagnostic Service (EDS), LRI, for testing rather than Hearing Services.
Children can be referred for a hearing test for a variety of reasons:
- The newborn hearing screen may have requested a follow up test at 8-10months of age
- Some children will require regular hearing test due to the increased risk of hearing problems such as those with a cleft palate, down’s syndrome, family history of progressive hearing loss and those with a unilateral (unaided) hearing loss etc.
- A health professional may require hearing to be checked for various reasons such as those linking to a syndrome or developmental delay
- If speech and language therapy is required and a hearing loss needs to be ruled out
- An ENT consultant has requested a hearing test to check hearing
- Parental concerns with hearing
The appointment will last about 30 minutes. There are two clinics, one for pre-school children and one for school age children (developmental age). At the appointment you will be asked some questions about your child’s hearing, their development, and their health. All children will need to be awake for their behavioural hearing assessment. The results will be explained to you at the end of the session. The room must be quiet for the hearing test so if your child has young brothers or sisters, it would be helpful if you could arrange care for them so that they do not have to attend the clinic.
We also run complex clinics (appointments last up to 90mins) for children with other auditory difficulties such as tinnitus (noises in ears) and hyperacusis (oversensitivity to sounds) or ‘listening’ problems whereby a hearing loss has already been ruled out, i.e. auditory processing disorder. The audiologist will discuss any issues and look at management techniques for these conditions.
Please find further information regarding diagnostic testing in the booklet linked below:
