HHIssues

Center for Hearing and Deafness Research opens in Cincinnati

The Cincinnati Post
[url="http://www.cincypost.com/2001/mar/17/hear031701.html"]http://www.cincypost.com/2001/mar/17/hear031701.html[/url]

Children's treats hearing loss
By Laurel Campbell, Post staff reporter

Children's Hospital Medical Center formally opened its Center for Hearing and Deafness Research Friday with a team of doctors who treat hearing-impaired children and researchers who study the causes, prevention and treatment of hearing loss.

And star patient Ethan Eiselt munched on apple slices through the speeches and ceremony.

Ethan, 2 1/2, received a cochlear implant last August, an electrode placed directly in his inner ear. Now his hearing is near normal, said his parents, Alyssa and Eric Eiselt of Mount Washington.

Ethan was born with severe to profound hearing loss, but his parents didn't discover it until he was a year old and not responding to his name. He takes speech therapy to catch up to his hearing peers.

''Up to 500 children in Ohio are born each year with a significant hearing loss, but we only pick up on a third of them,'' said Dr. Daniel Choo, director of the hospital's new hearing center. ''These children leave the hospital with a handicap that affects the rest of their lives.''

Choo wants all states to adopt universal newborn hearing screening, as Kentucky has done. The test is done before an infant leaves the hospital.

Because of the impact on children from hearing loss, ''I feel a sense of urgency to work faster to make advances,'' Choo said.

Brain stem implants may come soon for children under age 12, Choo said. Some children are not candidates for cochlear implants because they lack the hearing nerve.

''Kids who have had radiation and chemotherapy, it has killed off the hearing nerve,'' Choo said.

The cause of deafness in about half of children born that way is genetic, blamed on about five gene mutations, Choo said. Children's Hospital started last summer to examine the DNA in blood samples to check for those genes.

''If we know the cause of deafness, it keeps us from having to do thousands of dollars worth of tests and putting the child through all that,'' said Dr. John Greinwald Jr., assistant director of the center.

Dr. Min-Xin Guan is investigating the relationship of hearing loss to a group of antibiotics commonly given to young children.

''If you have a certain genetic mutation, it will cause deafness when you're given this antibiotic,'' Guan said. ''We can do a screening for that here.''

The marriage of science and patient care has made the services of the Center for Hearing and Deafness Research a regional center of expertise, Greinwald believes.

''The key thing we have built here is an interdisciplinary partnership between clinicians and researchers,'' Greinwald said, ''to ask the clinically important questions and then answer them.''

Publication date: 03-17-01

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[This message has been edited by HHIssues (edited 03-18-2001).]

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[This message has been edited by HHIssues (edited 03-18-2001).]