Center for Hearing Health Established

Reflecting NYU Medical Center’s strength in the diagnosis and treatment of hearing disorders, the Department of Otolaryngology has established the Center for Hearing Health. Comprehensive in scope, the new Center coordinates the expertise of a number of disciplines and offers some important new clinical services.

Chief among the new services are the enhancements in hearing loss diagnosis and treatment that will be available to children. The recent recruitment of a full-time pediatric audiologist will help address two important issues: the prevalence of often-undetected hearing impairment in young children (two to three of every 1,000 are born deaf or hard-of-hearing), and the impact such undiagnosed impairment can have on the child’s learning abilities, behavior, and social development.

Hearing loss is also very common in adults. In the United States, hearing difficulty is reported by 25-30% of people aged 65-70, and by nearly 50% of those over 75 years of age. Baby boomers are also experiencing hearing loss in ever increasing numbers, stemming from exposure to occupational and recreational noise during their youth.

Hearing disorders are diagnosed at NYU Medical Center using an array of sophisticated tests that include audiograms, immittance testing to evaluate the workings of the middle and inner ear, otoacoustic emission to assess the cochlea, and auditory brainstem testing to measure how well the neural pathways transmit sound signals. Patients diagnosed with hearing loss, tinnitus, and other hearing disorders are provided with state-of-the-art medical devices, as well as interventions and therapies in partnership with experts in speech pathology, rehabilitation services, and other disciplines.

The Center for Hearing Health also provides specialized testing for the second major function of the inner ear: balance. Highly specialized tests such as electronystagmography and vestibular evoked myogenic potentials (VEMP) testing-- the newest addition to the Department’s diagnostic tools—help pinpoint the causes of dizziness, vertigo, and other balance disorders. Eventually, to complement the work of the Center for Hearing Health, the Department of Otolaryngology aims to develop a dedicated Vestibular Center for the diagnosis and treatment of patients with these conditions.

Deaf and hard-of-hearing patients have access to other high-quality, renowned services that are part of the Center for Hearing Health, such as the NYU Cochlear Implant Center—one of the largest and most highly respected clinical and research implant centers in the world. An NYU Center of Excellence, the Center has performed over 1,500 implants on children and adults of all ages. Additional services at the Center include bone-anchored hearing aids for unilateral deafness and auditory brainstem implant for patients lacking an auditory nerve.

In addition to offering comprehensive clinical services, scientists in the Department continue to carry out hearing health research for the new Center. With funding from the National Institutes of Health and other agencies, investigators are researching the genetics and causes of deafness, as well as treatment for hearing loss, including improving current devices and developing new technologies.

Directed by Anil K. Lalwani, M.D., Mendik Foundation Professor and Chair of the Department of Otolaryngology, the Center for Hearing Health team includes clinicians from the Division of Otology, Neurotology, and Skull Base Surgery (Division Chief J. Thomas Roland, M.D.; Anil K. Lalwani, M.D.; Pamela C. Roehm, M.D., Ph.D.; and Paul Hammerschlag, M.D.), as well as clinicians and researchers in the wider Department of Otolaryngology. Services are offered at various sites: Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine, the Schwartz Health Care Center (HCC), and the Laurence D. Fink and Lori Weider Fink Children’s Ambulatory Care Center.