Copyright 2000 The Baltimore Sun Company
THE
BALTIMORE SUN
June 20, 2000, Tuesday ,FINAL
SECTION: LOCAL ,1B
LENGTH:
850 words
HEADLINE: Hospitals will test tender ears;
Screening infants will allow early diagnosis, treatment
BYLINE: Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan
SOURCE: SUN STAFF
BODY:
Benjamin J. Dubin first suspected something was amiss when his baby
daughter, Rachel, didn't respond to the musical mobile above her crib and
sometimes seemed not to hear her parents' words.
But it wasn't until
Rachel reached age 4 that the Baltimore County girl's hearing was tested,
revealing that she was deaf in one ear and severely hearing-impaired in the
other. She had had the hearing loss since birth, and Dubin wishes it had been
diagnosed earlier so that doctors could have started treatment immediately to
prevent problems she had with speech development.
Hospitals are gearing
up to make sure that cases such as Rachel Dubin's don't occur again. A state law
requiring the testing of infants' hearing within 48 hours of birth goes into
effect July 1.
"The little bit of money it costs is going to save
society a lot," said Benjamin Dubin, 58, an accountant who is national treasurer
of the Alexander Graham Bell Foundation, which has pushed for mandatory
screening of infants' hearing.
"Early intervention is going to make
these kids very productive," said Dubin, whose daughter Rachel, 23, recently
earned her master's degree in international studies at George Washington
University. " And there's going to be no limit to what they can accomplish."
Maryland's legislation, passed last year, requires every hospital to
screen newborns for hearing problems and requires health insurance companies to
cover the test, which costs $20 to $40.
Twenty-seven states require such tests, and legislation is pending in nine.
The test, which takes 30 seconds to two minutes, is performed on all
newborns in a handful of hospitals across the state, including St. Joseph
Medical Center in Towson and Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring. Other
hospitals test only high-risk babies, those with a history of hearing impairment
in their families, low birth weight or genetic birth defects connected with
deafness.
Audiologists or technicians conduct the test using hand-held
devices known as otoacoustic emissions probes to send a sound into a baby's ear.
They wait to see whether the sound reverberates through the ear canal and sends
a signal back to the device. If the baby fails the test, audiologists usually
repeat the screening the next day before deciding whether further tests are
needed.
W. Stephen Seipp, a Lutherville-based audiologist who has
conducted infant hearing screenings at St. Joseph Medical
Center for 18 months, estimates 10 percent of babies fail the test the first
time. In the end, about 1 percent of babies tested have hearing loss.
At
St. Joseph, Paul Teie, an audiologist who works with Seipp, said that of the
3,300 babies tested there in the past 18 months, hearing problems have been
diagnosed in two. He said that proportion is below average.
In pushing
for the mandatory testing last year, doctors and parents argued that such
screening would identify hearing problems in children earlier and allow them to
start treatment sooner.
They also argued that the costs of the test are
outweighed by the millions of dollars the state would save in educating
hearing-impaired children whose speech and reading development might have been
hindered by late detection.
Seipp said that without the infant
screenings, hearing problems often are diagnosed only when children enter
preschool or elementary school, and teachers notice that they can't follow along
in class.
Karl White, director of the National Center for Hearing
Assessment and Management at Utah State University, said research has found that
as much as $400,000 per child can be saved in special-
education costs if early detection enables them to develop at the same pace as
nonhearing-impaired children.
For parents, the tests often provide quick
answers for some of the questions and worries that a newborn brings into their
lives. Cheryl McCleary-Bowser, 38, a marketing associate who lives in Upper
Marlboro, remembers worrying about whether her 4-year-old son, John, had hearing
problems during his early years.
"When he was 5 months old, I remember
doing little tests, like clapping my hands around him, trying to see if he could
hear," she said.
When her daughter, Jaelyn, was born six weeks ago, she
had the same worries. But this time, she didn't have to do any clapping.
Seipp had begun conducting dry runs of the infant hearing
screening last week at Anne Arundel Medical Center, one of four
hospitals that his company, Hearing Assessment Center, is preparing for the
mandatory tests.
McCleary-Bowser signed Jaelyn up for a test and went to
the hospital in Parole on Thursday.
Watching Seipp insert the tiny probe
into the sleeping Jaelyn's ear and then waiting as the seconds ticked by,
McCleary- Bowser nervously asked, "Isn't she supposed to wave or raise her hand
or something?"
Within minutes, Seipp completed the tests and announced
that Jaelyn had passed.
"When you leave the hospital, there are so many
things you worry about," McCleary-Bowser said. "It's good to have one more piece
of information that things are going fine."
GRAPHIC: Photo(s) An earful: Audiologist W.
Stephen Seipp performs a hearing test on 6-week-old Jaelyn Bowser as she naps.
Her hearing was fine.
LOAD-DATE: June 21, 2000
