Artikel
The role of neonatal screening in hearing loss diagnosis and treatment
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Autoren
Veröffentlicht: | 4. April 2012 |
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Gliederung
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Introduction: Hearing loss is the most common congenital pathology, 1-3 of 1000 newborns having profound sensorineural hearing loss, an impairment which can have serious consequences in children’s psychosocial and cognitive development in case of delayed diagnosis.
Material, Method: The study was conducted on a sample of 130 patients with sensorineural severe/profound bilateral hearing loss divided into a group of 50 hearing aided children and a group of 80 cochlear implanted children, 46 implanted before the age of 5 years and 34 of them after this age. Twenty nine of 130 patients had been tested in the newborn screening protocol. The speech perception and production assesment was done using global scales, the revised category of auditory performance (CAPR) and the speech intelligibility scale (SIR).
Results: In the group of patients who have made neonatal hearing screening the age of hearing loss diagnosis ranged from 6 to 27 months, with an average of 15.03 months. In the group of patients who have not recived neonatal hearing screening the average was 29.64 months ranging between 2 and 61 months. The speech assesment scores were better when the correction with hearing aids was done in the early years or the cochlear implantation was made at young age.
Conclusions: Early diagnosis of hearing loss allowed early intervention either by hearing aids or/and cochlear implants. Children treated in the first years of life had better auditory and speech performances than those diagnosed later and have not benefited from early auditory stimulation. The newborn hearing screening reduced significantly the mean age of hearing loss diagnosis. This allows early rehabilitation, increasing the chance of better performances and a proper integration in mainstream schools.