These events are free for AHH Members not seeking accreditation!

The series is rapidly evolving and more sessions will be added in the coming weeks!

Session 1: Why music is a powerful (re)habilitation tool for children who are deaf and hard-of-hearing
Date: Friday 18 February
Time: 12-1pm AEST.
Presenter: Dr Chi Lo
Individual Sessions: $50
To register:  https://bit.ly/3nCfn3r

This presentation explores the benefits of music for children who are deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH). Music is often viewed as a higher-order auditory activity which may serve as a barrier to participation. However, this workshop will explore how music is a rich and powerful multi-modal activity, and participation has broad benefits for the brain, and specific benefits for DHH children.

Session 2 (in 2 parts): Genetic testing for hearing loss – clinical utility and latest developments
Date: Friday 11 March & Friday 8 April
Time:12-1pm AEST.
Presenters: Mona Saleh and Radhika Rajkumar
Individual Sessions: $75
To register: https://bit.ly/3nCfn3r

Did you know that 50% of hearing loss has a genetic basis? Genetic causes include over 100 genes associated with non-syndromic hearing loss and over 400 syndromic conditions that can include hearing loss as well as other malformations and medical problems. Syndromic and non-syndromic deafness are genetically heterogeneous disorders characterized by mild to profound deafness in early adulthood, childhood,or infancy. The genetic heterogeneity associated with these conditions can make it difficult to use phenotype as the sole criterion to select a definitive cause.

Understanding the cause of hearing loss can be empowering and beneficial to both a child and their family by confirming a diagnosis, helping guide treatment and management decisions and enabling early interventions to maximise speech and learning potential. Identification of a disease-causing variant can also inform recurrence-risk assessment and genetic counselling.

In part 1 participants will get an overview of genetics and how it impacts on all stages of life including reproduction, birth, growth and development. An introduction to the utility and process of taking a family health history will also be covered. The inheritance patterns for the main causes of genetic hearing loss will be discussed as well as some case studies to illustrate the way in which genetics can impact on families with an inherited form of hearing loss.

Part 2 session delves deeper into the application of genetic testing for individuals and families with hearing loss. An overview of the techniques used for genetic testing with some case examples will illustrate its utility, ethical implications and how to access Invitae’s sponsored testing program.

Session 4: Structural Abnormalities of the cochlea and auditory nerve: considerations in paediatric cochlear implantation
Date: Tuesday 31 May
Time: 9am – 10am
Presenter: Dr Kirsty Gardner Berry
Individual Sessions: $50
To register: https://bit.ly/3nCfn3r

Structural abnormalities of the cochlea and auditory nerve hold a number of implications that need to be taken into consideration when counselling families about expected outcomes with cochlear implantation, and for surgical planning. This presentation reports on the 20% of children identified with structural abnormalities within a population of 346 paediatric cochlear implant recipients at NextSense. Topics will include key time points during embryological development that can impact on the severity of the anatomical abnormality, implications for choice of cochlear implant array, surgical considerations, and the potential impact on signal transmission.

Session 5: Single Sided Deafness
Date: Wednesday 27 July
Time: 12pm – 1pm
Presenter: Dr Dayse Tavora
Individual Sessions: $50
To register: https://bit.ly/3nCfn3r

Single sided deafness (SSD) is defined as a severe to profound hearing loss (>70dB HL) in one ear and hearing thresholds within normal limits in the contralateral ear (<30dB HL). People with SSD are deprived of binaural cues – squelch and summation – and have difficult hearing sound that is projected directly at their non-hearing ear because of the head shadow effect. Furthermore, SSD reduces social and psychological QoL and imposes a remarkable level of handicap as per general and specific self-assessments tool. For the last decade, several research groups have demonstrated that CI provides a significant improvement in function including speech understanding in noise and localisation ability, as well as improving QoL and reducing tinnitus significantly in both the early and long-term.

Session 6: Cochlear Technology in the Classroom
Date: Thursday 4 August
Time: 4pm -5pm
Presenter: Dr Vidya Raghavan
Individual Sessions: $50
To register: https://bit.ly/3nCfn3r

It is well accepted that for all children with hearing loss, it is vital to provide a favourable signal-to-noise ratio in the challenging environment of the classroom. This is where remote microphone technology can really help.This webinar will provide professionals with the resources and knowledge required to confidently support students with Cochlear devices in the classroom. You will gain an understanding of current Cochlear Baha and Nucleus processors, the main players in remote microphone technology, and how to use these in the classroom with your students with implantable devices.

The session will finish with an troubleshooting quiz to help prepare you for those common classroom scenarios.

These events are endorsed by Audiology Australia.

Ten days after each live event, a recording of the webinar will also be made available for you to watch via the Short Courses website. You will be notified via email for both the live event and when the recording is available to watch.

To learn more and register, please visit the following link: 
https://www.nextsense.org.au/professional-development/audiology-masterclass-series-2022