Early Intervention for Hearing Loss in Children: Drafting from Theory to Clinical Practice

Dear Colleagues,

Childhood hearing disorders can seriously affect multiple aspects of human development such as language/communication skills, social-emotional development, learning and academic development, mental health and long-term quality of life. Children with early hearing loss are generally known to be at risk of additional disabilities.

On the other hand, hearing loss in children is a highly malleable condition. Current research points to the efficacy of newborn hearing screening followed by prompt diagnosis and timely high-quality early intervention that includes the fitting and monitoring of hearing technology as well as family-centered early intervention. Children have been shown to achieve optimal outcomes when time benchmarks for finalizing screening, diagnosis and access to early intervention are met.

Thus, effective intervention requires the full and smooth integration of multi-professional services in the medical (otorhinolaryngology, pediatrics, genetics, speech-language pathology, audiology, etc.) and non-medical (educational intervention, family support) fields.

The available research mainly identified predictors of child outcomes related to specific medical interventions (identification and management), family resources and involvement in intervention or educational early intervention. However, there is a lack of multidisciplinary research on the efficacy of complex comprehensive systems of intervention identifying their effects as a whole and that of specific predictors by taking other contributors into account. In addition, outcomes have often been restricted to audiology (e.g., aided hearing threshold) and speech-language (e.g., speech perception, vocabulary, reading comprehension), whereas domains such as social-emotional development, social participation, general health, mental health or child and family quality of life are less well researched.

This Special Issue welcomes research articles, systematic reviews and conceptual and methodological papers on the effects of early interventions—with a focus on the first three years of life—on child and family outcomes. Interventions include diagnostic audiology and audiological interventions, medical evaluation and management (otorhinolaryngology, pediatrics, genetics, developmental and behavioral pediatrics) and educational early interventions and family support. Contributions that elaborate the impact of multi-dimensional interventions are particularly encouraged. Furthermore, studies on interventions in children with hearing loss and comorbidities (e.g., syndromal, neurodevelopmental, psychosocial) are highly welcome.

Dr. Johannes Fellinger
Dr. Johannes Hofer
Dr. Daniel Holzinger
Guest Editors

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