An Interdisciplinary Approach to Audiology Research
Researchers in the Division of Audiology at Cincinnati Children’s are dedicated to improving outcomes for children with hearing loss and hearing development concerns. We especially focus on identifying hearing loss in infancy and early detection and prevention of hearing loss in children with chronic medical conditions.
Our research group is exceptionally interdisciplinary, partnering on current studies with Cincinnati Children’s co-investigators from areas including:
- Behavioral Medicine and Clinical Psychology
- Biostatistics and Epidemiology
- Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
- Genetic Pharmacology
- Neonatology
- Neuroimaging
- Pulmonary Medicine
- Speech-Language Pathology
Our Research
Our studies have been published in national and international clinical practice guidelines in the areas of newborn hearing screening, otitis media treatment and ear tube surgery, ototoxicity monitoring for hearing loss, and auditory processing disorder.
We’ve published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles that have made important and novel discoveries that are changing clinical practice in the following areas:
- Cortical and brainstem differences in auditory processing disorder that explain listening difficulties
- Early brain physiology and later language development effects of slight-mild hearing loss in newborns and toddlers born prematurely
- Extended high-frequency hearing loss and relations to speech perception in noise in children and young adults with cystic fibrosis
- Identification and improvement of barriers to diagnosis and treatment for congenital hearing loss
- Test procedures and normative studies for balance problems in children
- Novel pharmacokinetics that predicts hearing loss due to drug toxicity
- Randomized studies of advanced hearing aid treatments for mild hearing loss in children
- Validation of techniques for earlier and accurate detection of mild hearing loss in newborns
- Remote testing and hearing aid fitting to address access to care in low-income countries
Specific research highlights include:
- Important clinical practice improvements related to hearing in newborns that have been adopted by the Division of Audiology at Cincinnati Children’s and across the world. This includes the validation of several newly available commercial diagnostic tools that are U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved and enable earlier and more accurate diagnosis of hearing loss at birth:
- Wideband tympanometry
- Chirp auditory brainstem responses
- Diagnostic otoacoustic emissions
- Anesthesia to affect auditory brainstem responses in surgery
- Findings that show using a validated parent report tool is the fastest, least expensive and most accurate way to determine which children have listening difficulties and need therapy. The tool reveals fully documented underlying brain-based differences in children who pass hearing tests yet struggle to hear and understand spoken information.
- New guidelines adopted and published by the Cystic Fibrosis Center and Cincinnati Children’s Division of Audiology to closely monitor children receiving these drugs and provide audiologic treatment as needed. The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation published these guidelines, and they’re now part of the registry database to monitor care.
We partner with academic centers, national and international health systems, and federal and nonprofit programs, including:
- Boys Town National Research Hospital
- Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
- Hands & Voices
- National Center for Rehabilitative Auditory Research
- Nationwide Children’s Hospital
- Oregon Health & Science University
- The Ohio State University
- The University of Manchester in England
- The University of Queensland in Australia
- The University of Pretoria in South Africa
- University of Cincinnati
- University of Nebraska Medical Center
- Washington University in St. Louis
- Western University in Canada
- Women, Infant and Children programs of Greater Cincinnati
Our Research Funding
We receive an average of $1.7 million in funding each year from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and the Gerber Foundation.
Over the past 15 years, our research team has received more than $15 million in NIH funding.
Looking to the Future
We are currently working to develop:
- A patient self-report measure for hearing, tinnitus and balance problems for ototoxicity
- A predictive model for language delay in prematurity using MRI, auditory EEG, hearing loss, parent stimulation and early intervention
- Clinical assessment tools for audiologists to improve early hearing loss detection
- Objective measures to evaluate auditory and speech processing in infants
- Translation of novel, high-frequency otoacoustic emissions for detection of early drug toxicity to the ear
