It is important to discuss the child's ongoing medical issues with the family, even in the context of limited focused appointments. These issues are pertinent to how vigilant the family will be in addressing issues related to hearing loss. An estimate of the infant's audiogram is needed to appropriately fit hearing aids. The physical fit and retention of the earmolds and the hearing aids are very important for the infant and parents to achieve initial success and appropriate benefit from the aids. Be somewhat conservative in selecting the hearing aid gain and output, so the infant is not over-amplified and accepts the aids.
Parents often are very close when talking to their infants.
As the infant develops, well-done behavioral hearing testing should be used with, or instead of, ABR testing to estimate the infant's audiogram. Infants with hearing loss and hearing aids need to be followed closely. Remember the importance of the cross-check principle in pediatric assessment. Each test procedure, behavioral and physiologic, should be cross-checked by an independent measure. Diagnosis of an infant's hearing loss should never be made on the basis of a single audiologic test procedure.