Audiology

We are experts in assessing hearing in babies, children, teens and young adults. We work as a team with other experts and your family. Our goal is to help your child realize their full potential to hear and communicate.

• Accurate diagnosis and complete care
  • Hearing loss can happen for many reasons. We work closely with other teams to identify and treat hearing loss. We treat children with a wide range of hearing abilities.
  • We use a range of tests to assess your child’s hearing and make sure they get the right services.
  • Our services include hearing devices, cochlear implants and some types of hearing assistance technologies. Read about options for children with hearing loss.
• Support for your whole family
  • We care for your child while helping you learn how best to manage their hearing loss. As they get older, your child plays a larger role in their care. We help you fully understand treatment options and make choices that are right for your family.
  • Our team helps your family through the challenges of your child’s condition. We link you to community resources and support groups.
  • At Seattle Children’s, we work with many children and families from around the Northwest and beyond. We can help with financial counseling, housing, transportation, interpreter services and spiritual care. Read about our services for patients and families.
• Research to advance care
  • Our team does research to improve outcomes for children who are deaf and hard of hearing. Our patients have the option to take part in research studies of new treatments.
  • We base our treatments on the most current and well-supported evidence.
  • To improve care for all children, we publish our findings and train the providers of the future.

We provide these services:

• Behavioral hearing assessments

  Behavioral hearing assessments measure how your child behaves in response to speech and other sounds. We offer behavioral hearing assessments for patients from 6 months to 21 years old. The assessments are tailored to your child's age and development. During these tests, we play speech and other sounds to your child at varying levels. With younger children, we train your child to look toward the source of sound, and we watch how they respond. With older children and young adults, we ask them to repeat the word or make a signal if they hear the speech or sounds. See My Visit to the Audiology Clinic (PDF).

• Physiologic hearing assessments

  Physiologic hearing assessments measure your child's physical response to quiet sounds. We use these tests to diagnose hearing disorders in children at any age. Read about:

  • Newborn Hearing Screening (PDF) (Spanish)
  • BAER and EOAE Testing (PDF) (Spanish)
  • BAER and EOAE Hearing Tests Under Anesthesia (PDF) (Arabic) (Spanish)
• Hearing device evaluation and fitting

  Our team is skilled at identifying the hearing device that best meets each child's needs. Our clinic serves only babies, children, teens and young adults. This makes us experts on the needs of growing bodies. We use evidence-based strategies designed for children to make fitting your child's device as precise and comfortable as possible.

  Read more about device options for children with hearing loss (PDF).

• Team support to improve communication

  We work on teams to support programs offered by Seattle Children’s Childhood Communication Center, including:

  • Aural habilitation
  • Cochlear implants
  • Educational outreach