«Remote fitting is a technology which forms
a transition to home-made fitting,
and self-fitting by the patient».
Prof. A. Buechner (Director for Science,
German Hearing Center, Hannover,
ENT Clinic of the Hannover College of Medicine)
[Evgeniya Grigorieva-Astrakhan] Is remote fitting likely to be worth performing [to a higher degree] on adult patients with late onset of deafness?
Definitely not; it is just as suitable for younger children with different indications. But this is circumstance-dependent; the expert doing the fitting remotely should have a good rapport with the family and the child.
[Ulyana Kovna-Lviv] How old should a child be before it is possible to fit them remotely?
This depends on how well the expert is acquainted with the situation and the needs as well as the hearing ability of the child.
A webcam does not enable the expert to see the child’s reaction in detail, yet this is the data on which the correct settings are partly based. This is why the Hannover experts have spoken against remote fitting for infants and early school age children.
[Jana Frey_Berlin] So which age is appropriate for beginning the practice?
I think this may be considered once the child is one year old. The expert doing the fitting should also know the child very well.
[Monika Lehnhardt–Auggen] I know that in Australia as well as in Poland remote fitting is done on very young children, due to the huge distances involved.
We might try this in the future; after all, we opened just in 2011. We are very open to new experiences in remote rehabilitation.
[Nikiforov Konstantin] Do both children and adults receive remote fitting? Or is this just for the adults?
So far we’ve gained experience just with older patients; our youngest is 10 years old. We are confident that fitting over distance is possible for younger children, too.