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of national health service Medresco hearing
aids available are most unsatisfactory. The
insert impressions have to be sent by post to
the firm which makes the moulds this results
in considerable delay before each insert
becomes available to the deaf child There
are also difficulties in obtaining the most
suitable tvpes of Medresco hearing aids for
an individual child due to fluctuations in
supplies The Department of Health & Social
Security has further ruled that after a hearing
impaired child who wears a hearing aid has
left school repairs can be made to this aid
providing this involves the receiver or
connector and can be done by the technician
If a more serious repair or replacement of the
aid is needed the post aural aid is to be
withdrawn and a body aid supplied or the
young person pavs the full cost of a new post
aural appliance
During the year the children at Hanworth
and Isleworth junior training schools were
screened for a hearing loss by the audio
metricians 111 hearing tests were performed
it was necessary to see some of the children
more than once to make a satisfactory assessment
of their hearing 53 vision tests were
also carried out on the children in these
schools and similarly it was necessary to see
some of them more than once before making
a satisfactory assessment
Mr Wall senior peripatetic teacher of the
deaf made a total of 738 visits to homes and
schools during the year He is responsible
for hard of hearing children in both Hounslow
and Ealing 8 children attended secondary
schools 21 children attend primary schools
8 children attend special schools and 6
children are in junior training centres 12
children of pre school age were visited
Four parents meetings were held during
the year and Mr Wall spoke on the problem of
deafness to 4 interested organisations 3
students from Dr Dale s course at the London
University were attached to him to study
peripatetic fieldwork for one week
Several research projects have been under
taken during the year As the result of the
head teacher of Beaver s Lane School
expressing concern about the possibility of
his pupils suffering hearing loss from the
effects of aircraft noise a study into the
effect of aircraft noise on the children in the
school was undertaken 250 children were
Drought to the Hearing Clinic and audiograms
obtained The BBC filmed this testing for a
Man Alive programme The incidence of
hearing loss in this group of children did not
appear to be significantly higher than in
other schools more favourably situated in the
the borough It has been decided to test the
children of Norwood Green school which is not
in the direct flight path for comparison
Dr Fisch is a member of a working party set
up by the Department of Health and Social
Security to evaluate screening procedures for
hearing loss in the elderly He was particularly
interested in testing the hearing of a group of
old people and then trying to treat the hearing
defects discovered Audiometric testing was
performed on the residents of Heston House
85 audiograms were done 1 only was quite
normal 13 of these people already had hearing
aids but only 4 of these aids were working
satisfactorily Dr Fisch hoped to be able to
see all the old people with hearing difficulty
and prescribe a suitable aid where necessary
He has found however that the present
provisions are inadequate to deal with a group
such as this
During the summer holidays all the Heston
children due to start school in the September
term were seen at the hearing clinic Each
child had a hearing test a test of their speech
and language development and a test of their
motor function The result of this survey will
be published in full in a later report and will
be compared with a similar survey performed
at Chiswick in 1969
A film strip was made by Dr Fisch on the
reaction to audiometric testing of 4 sets of
twins
The teaching activities of the clinic
continued this year Ten post graduate doctors
from the Wolfson centre spent a day at the clinic
Medical students from St Batholomew s Hospital
attended in groups of ten for clinical instruction
in audiology. Speech therapists from two schools
of speech therapy attended and also student
health visitors and student midwives Audio
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