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As mentioned in previous reports a fact that has emerged in this work is that,
although numbers of children are found with varying degrees of unsuspected hearing lass,
this is rarely of such a degree that special educational treatment in a special school is
necessary. After treatment, either by a school medical officer at a minor ailment clinic
or by the specialist at our special clinics, or at an aural department of a hospital, a
favourable position in class, with perhaps, a hearing aid and Instruction in lip reading
is all that is required in the way of special educational treatment.
A complete round of the primary schools was finished in July of this year and the
school nurse has not done any testing since.
In 1952 it was noted that some new technical advance would be needed and that the
trend had been away from gramophone audiometry to pure-tone audiometry. In 1955 it was
hoped that a start would be made with pure-tone screening in 1956. Although by the end
of the year screening had not actually taken place, Individual testing had been carried
out.
The Medical Research Council's Committee on the Educational Treatment of Deafness
has recommended the adoption of the sweep-frequency method. Before giving the figures
relating to the work done during 1956 It should be mentioned that the school medical
officers, as for many years past, refer any cases of suspected deafness to the aural
specialist and if he considers that there is any degree of deafness present a pure-tone
audiogram is taken. Should the audiogram confirm a loss of hearing sufficient to Justify
special educational treatment the necessary steps are taken to ascertain the child as
deaf or partially deaf and appropriate action is taken.

The pure-tone audiometer produces a range of tones corresponding to all the tones
produced by the otologist's tuning forks, and It produces those tones in a wide scale of
measured intensities of sound, ranging from the threshold of hearing to the threshold of
feeling. By this means the audiometrician can not only rapidly ascertain what tones the
child can hear, but also how loud they need to be before they are heard, thus enabling her
to plot a chart or audiogram which illustrates graphically the full extent and characteristics
of the hearing loss. This audiogram provides valuable data for diagnosis, a useful
indication for therapy, and a reliable record for use in consultation or in re-examination
at a later date. In re-examination over a period the Audiogram is most valuable, for it is
the only scientific means by which an audiometrician can rapidly and accurately measure the
extent to which the child's hearing has improved or deteriorated.
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