SUMO is not only for adults, it is also designed to address the special needs of children and their parents.

Small and robust – designed for kids

Children’s instruments need to be small enough to fit snugly behind the ear, while being robust enough to handle even the roughest treatment. Control settings for volume and telecoil need to be clearly visible to parents and care givers. The slim size pediatric hook, clear switch markings and tamper-resistant battery drawer make SUMO perfect for this population.

Child focused fitting

When fitting SUMO, the hearing care professional ensures that audibility is obtained without prescribing too much power for the smaller size of a child’s ear canal. The fitting software can make automatic adjustments to compensate for childrens' ears.

Speech acquisition

With the wide-scale introduction of universal newborn hearing screening, infants with severe or profound hearing loss can now be identified at 1-2 months of age. If your child belongs to this group,  then he or she can be readily fitted with small yet powerful hearing aids.

It's important that there is no compromise on power for size, and these SUMO can help maximize speech and language development - especially if your child is being assessed for cochlear implant candidacy. For children with limited auditory capabilities, SUMO’s increased low frequency gain and MPO can provide maximum access to crucial speech information.

Cochlear implants

For children using a cochlear implant, research indicates that fitting the non-implanted ear (with a sever/profound loss) can provide real life benefits in speech perception, localization and speech production (Ching TY, Psarros C, Hill M, Dillon H. Incerti P. Should children who use cochlear implants wear hearing aids in the opposite ear? Ear Hear 2001 Oct; 22(5): 365-80).

You can read an abstract of the article at the online PubMed library. The PubMed library also offers you the possibility to order the whole article.

SUMO’s extra low frequency amplification make it an ideal solution in such cases, since it can provide an excellent balance between the cochlear implant and the hearing aid.

If you would like to learn more about hearing loss and children, please visit the OtiKids website.