Screening opens window to a world of sound - Times Herald-Record
(TNS) — Four-year-old Betty Schottler starts each morning with the same six sounds: (m), (ah), (oo), (ee), (sh), and (s). Her mom makes the sounds first, then Betty repeats them to check that her cochlear implant is working. Betty was born profoundly deaf and got her first set of glittery rainbow hearing aids at 6 weeks old. Then, before her 1st birthday, she had surgery to place a cochlear implant in the bone behind her ear. The device sends signals to the brain, and the brain recognizes those signals as sound. For Betty and thousands of children born in the U.S. with a hearing impairment, newborn screening is the first step toward introducing them to the world of sound. Most babies in the U.S. get screened in the first few days after birth; in 2016, up to 98% of newborns were tested, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Typically, a hearing screener comes to the mother’s bedside and tests the baby in the bassinet. It works best when the child and the envi