NEW VANDERBILT BILL WILKERSON HEARING & SPEECH CENTER OPENS FOR PATIENTS

NEW

After many years of planning and construction, the new

Vanderbilt
Bill
Wilkerson
Center

for hearing and Speech Sciences facility is open for patients. Located within the top five floors of Medical Center East –
South
Tower
, on the

Vanderbilt
University
Medical
Center

campus, the facility houses state-of-the-art services for adult and pediatric hearing and speech patients who come from throughout Middle Tennessee for the facility’s specialized services.

A Community Open House and ribbon cutting for the new facility will be held today at 5 p.m. at the building’s main entrance just off

21^st Avenue South

.

The facility’s sixth floor houses the Speech-Language Pathology Clinic, which treats children with speech and language problems, autism, feeding and swallowing disorders, stuttering and other communication issues. It also houses the new Center for Childhood Deafness and Family Communication.

The facility’s seventh floor houses The Vanderbilt Voice Center and the John S. Odess Clinic for Otolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery. Specialized services on this floor include videostroboscopy rooms, a vestibular testing suite, piano rooms for the Care of the Professional Voice Program and special facilities for patients being treated for head and neck cancer.

Graduate education classrooms occupy the eighth floor, which is shared with the

Eskind
Diabetes
Center

.

The Audiology clinic and the Pi Beta Phi Rehabilitation Institute are housed on the ninth floor, which includes eight testing suites, hearing aid evaluation rooms, cochlear implant management rooms, and a hearing aid dispensary. Rehabilitation has a physical therapy gym, counseling and treatment areas, a computer lab and an outdoor recreational area for patients.

The top floor houses faculty offices and research laboratories, including an anechoic chamber, a reverberation chamber, a temporal bone lab, a brain mapping lab and the new Dan Maddox Hearing Aid Research Lab.

Two new clinics have opened as a result of the increased space in the new building. The Pi Beta Phi Rehabilitation Institute and the Audiology Clinic have opened a joint “Risk of Falling Assessment Clinic” for older adults. The clinic tests vision, inner ear function, joint mobility and several other factors to determine what is causing the older person to fall and how it might best be treated. The goal of this clinic is to keep independent older adults independent longer.

Another new clinic is the Center for Childhood Deafness and Family Communication, a preschool focusing on spoken communication for deaf and hard-of-hearing children. The Center seeks to help these kids learn to talk and use their hearing aids and cochlear implants so that they can be mainstreamed when they reach kindergarten.

WHAT:
Open House and Ribbon Cutting for the new

Vanderbilt
Bill
Wilkerson
Center

WHEN:
5 p.m., Friday, Sept.16

WHERE:
Main Entrance,

Vanderbilt
Bill
Wilkerson
Center

, located just off

21^st Avenue South

on the VUMC campus