Absent auditory nerve?

[Acidrain]

Our 1.5 year old DS has profound unilateral sensorineural deafness. Apart from the constant glue ear on the other ear that ear is hearing.

We have just had a letter from the ENT consultant that my son has an absent auditory nerve on his deaf ear and that she would invite us in for a chat in due course.

Until then, can anybody shed any light on what this actually means?

It means the nerve on that side didn't form properly, so there is no nerve to carry the message from the cochlea to the auditory-processing part of the brain. If there's no auditory nerve, there's no point having a hearing aid.

I would imagine the Audiology team will do their utmost to restore good hearing in the working ear, clearing the glue ear with a grommet (possibly).

The National Deaf Children's Society is your best reference for information Our son has a severe bilateral loss called auditory neuropathy - the nerves are there, but his brain doesn't process the message correctly.

Hi op, can't answer your question, I think eggysmom got it.

But I am deaf on one ear due to mumps (age 6 or 7), my auditory nerve was crushed due to the swelling (I was told).

It is okay, you cannot get a hearing aid, I was offered hearing glasses 😁. Don't know if they do that now, or have any other things to help.

What I wanted to let you know is that you are not very affected by this (atleast i haven't been). It is my normal. When with lots of people and a lot of noise it is harder, and talking to someone seated on the 'wrong' side is annoying but that's it. In aforementioned circumstances I like to be able to see the person talking to me, I haven't been taught lip reading, but subconsciously it supports what I'm hearing, iyswim.

As long as your dc has his other ear sorted (and please remember to talk from the right side) everything should be okay 😀.

Enjoy your dc.

My DD also has profound loss in one ear (although unlike you we don’t have an exact reason why). Like Eggysmum said, the focus goes on to getting the hearing ear working as well as possible. ENT will likely offer grommets to treat the glue in the good ear. We were given that option, but turned it down due to the op risk when only one ear can work. We went back to Audiology and asked for a hearing aid to cover the loss from the glue. My DD grew out of the glue so that was a good option for us.

There are a couple of options for unilateral loss. They all involve giving more access to sound for the good ear. One is a CROS aid where a microphone is fitted to the bad ear and the sound it picks up is fed to a receiver in the good ear. The other option is a radio aid which is the same idea but the microphone is a gadget that you can sit on a table or give to eg teacher to hang around their neck. If technology doesn’t help then positioning in class etc will make a big difference, and a teacher for the deaf would help advise nursery/school how to help. Apologies if you know all this.

I also recommend NDCS. They have a helpline that you can call, they do useful info leaflets (there one on glue ear and one on unilateral loss) and you might be interested in ‘newly diagnosed’ family weekends.