Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
The New
York Times
View Related Topics
February 29, 2000, Tuesday, Late Edition -
Final
SECTION: Section F; Page 8; Column
5; Health & Fitness
LENGTH: 228 words
HEADLINE: VITAL SIGNS: TESTING;
Early Intervention
for Babies' Ears
BYLINE: By ERIC NAGOURNEY
BODY:
A new team of researchers has weighed into
the debate over whether infants should be routinely screened
for hearing loss at birth.
Although some experts
believe that such testing is unwarranted, researchers from the
University of Colorado at Boulder are offering evidence to the contrary.
Addressing a meeting last week of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, Dr. Christine Yoshinaga-Itano said that earlier
detection and action helped hearing-impaired children achieve normal language
skills.
"The studies of more than 350 deaf and hard of hearing children
show a very short critical period of normal language development in this
population," she said.
The researchers found that when doctors, using
state and federal grants, were able to conduct so-called universal screening of
newborns, congenital hearing loss was identified at about 2 months of age,
instead of what they said was now the average: 2.5 years.
Among deaf
children who received their diagnoses by the time they were 6 months old and
received treatment, 90 percent developed vocabulary skills for use in sign
language that were considered within the range of normal. Of those identified as
having hearing problems later in life, only the top 25 percent were able to gain
a vocabulary similar to the bottom 10 percent of children with normal language
development.
http://www.nytimes.com
LOAD-DATE: February 29, 2000 
