subject: Options For Microtia Hearing Loss [print this page] Microtia is known as a congenital ear deformity that can cause hearing loss and either ear deformity or no external ear development. There are medical treatments for microtia. These microtia surgery and medical treatment procedures exist with the goal to improve hearing loss and ear deformity that are related to the microtia birth defect.
The first step to treating microtia is to do tests to identify the extent of surgery needed and the extent of hearing loss involved in a specific birth defect case of microtia. Microtia and hearing loss testing can be done within the two weeks of birth with a microtia patient or any time later, but two weeks old is as early as microtia and hearing loss testing can begin, specifically the Brain-Stem and Auditory-Response Test which is abbreviated as BAER. The name speaks for itself on what the microtia and hearing loss test accomplishes.
CAT-Scans can also be done for microtia testing, but not until a microtia patient is at least five years old. The purpose of a CAT-Scan is to take pictures of the inner ear development. To determine if a microtia patient is a good candidate for corrective surgery which can improve the inner ear and hearing loss, a CAT-Scan is done to determine this. A CAT-Scan can be performed on microtia patients younger than five years old, but sedation must be used to keep the microtia child still.
Hearing loss caused by certain cases of microtia can be corrected with surgery if the hearing loss is due to aural atresia congenital ear deformity. The aural atresia congenital ear deformity means that there is hearing loss due to no insufficient sound conduction through the inner ear. With a surgery that creates a proper ear canal to conduct sound to the inner ear, microtia hearing loss can be corrected.
Surgery can correct microtia when a child simply has no ear canal to conduct sound to the inner ear. However, when a child with microtia has an underdeveloped inner ear, corrective surgery becomes more difficult and sometimes impossible to improve hearing loss. An example of when surgery may not be able to help is if a child with microtia doesn't have an eardrum and no small ear bones. These types of microtia symptoms when a child has no inner ear or a severely underdeveloped inner ear hearing loss is inevitable.
When a child has a microtia congenital ear deformity categorized as a sensorineural hearing loss, there is no corrective surgery. However, hearing aids can amplify sound so that the child with microtia can reduce hearing loss. In the case that a child with microtia of a sensorineural hearing loss which means there is ear deformity within the cochlear part of the ear, when a child with this type of microtia cannot benefit from hearing aids to reduce hearing loss, the child may be able to have a cochlear implant. A cochlear implant would obviously be another corrective surgery that the child with microtia would have to go through several tests and CAT-scans.
As you can see there are many corrective surgery options for a child with microtia, as well as many corrective hearing loss optoins.
