News that their child has hearing loss devastates and bewilders parents. Now you can help prelingually deaf children and their families by giving them a free, interactive and educational CD-ROM. The CD, "A Parent's Guide to Hearing Loss," describes virtually every aspect of rearing hearing-impaired children.
Prelingual hearing loss ranks among the most common congenital disorders in the United States and affects three out of every 1,000 infants, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. Despite that, the diagnosis often comes as a surprise: Only 50 percent of these hearing-impaired infants have an identified risk factor, and 90 percent have two hearing parents. Of children born with hearing loss, 3 percent to 6 percent of deaf children and perhaps another 3 percent to 6 percent of hard-of-hearing children have Usher syndrome, a progressive genetic condition in which the child develops retinitis pigmentosa and eventually becomes blind.
You can order "A Parent's Guide to Hearing Loss" from the CDC's National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities Early Hearing Detection and Intervention Program Web site.
Also available from the EHDI program site are "Just in Time for Pediatric Primary Care Providers: Early Hearing Detection and Intervention" and "Just in Time for Families: Early Hearing Detection and Intervention," 25-page books outlining hearing test schedules and screening protocols for infants, interventions, and helpful resources.
