Audiology is a clinical science in areas of auditory and vestibular functions. It involves the assessment and rehabilitation of hearing, balance and related disorders in people from birth to old age. This includes the prevention, identification, and evaluation of hearing disorders, the selection and evaluation of hearing instrument/prosthesis, and the habilitation/rehabilitation of individuals with hearing and/or vestibular impairment.
Clinical Services
The Audiology Centre at Prince of Wales Hospital, the University's teaching hospital, provides a comprehensive service to individuals of all ages, from infants to adults, who have problems with their hearing and/or balance. We perform a full range of diagnostic procedures including routine adult and paediatric hearing tests, immittance audiometry, otoacoustic emissions, electrocochleography, auditory brainstem response, auditory steady state response and cortical evoked response audiometry, along with videonystagmography and dynamic postural assessments. On the other hand, we also offer various rehabilitative services like evaluation and fitting of conventional hearing aid, assistive listening device, bone anchored hearing aid, middle ear implant, cochlear implant and auditory brainstem implant, as well as tinnitus and vestibular rehabilitation therapy.
Teaching
The Division of Audiology provides training and supervision for audiology students and participates in the teaching of medical students, ENT nurses, ENT trainees and family medicine trainees. It is also a centre for academic exchange, where professionals of related fields from Mainland China and overseas countries would come for academic visit and seminars.
Research
Audiology is a fast evolving discipline. Plenty of researches have been undertaken worldwide in the past decades in areas including, but are not limited to, electrophysiologic measurements of neural function, hearing conservation programs, auditory implants, vestibular rehabilitation therapy, tinnitus, speech perception, auditory processing, psychoacoustics, hearing aid design, and the psychosocial consequences of hearing loss. The Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery is a local leader in the field of auditory implants. It was the key research centre for cochlear implant in Asia Pacific region, and performed the first auditory brainstem implant and the first bone-anchored hearing aid implantation in irradiated nasopharyngeal cancer patient in Asia.
