The Role of FM Technology in the Management of Patients with Auditory Neuropathy/Dys-synchrony

Persons with auditory neuropathy/dys-synchrony display dys-synchronous peripheral neural function in the presence of intact outer hair cell function (e.g., Berlin et al., 1993; Starr et al., 1996). The majority of patients also report hearing difficulty characterized by difficulty understanding speech, particularly in background noise. Patients with AN/AD show variation along several dimensions, including sound awareness, the presence of other non-auditory sensory or motor neuropathies, age of onset, and residual ability to utilize auditory information. Utilizing auditory information alone for learning language is, in our experience, unsuccessful without cochlear implantation. Thus, we recommend use of visually based communication such as Cued Speech or some form of sign language. In those patients where some residual speech understanding ability remains, it is generally very poor in noise. Thus, there is a subgroup of patients with AN/AD who are candidates for use of FM technology either with or without cochlear implants.