It is estimated that most of the deaf children have some residual hearing. If these deaf children can be identified early, fit with hearing aids early,andtrained to speak early,they may be able to join the mainstream of hearing society.There are about 1. 16 million deaf children in China,and the number is increasingby 20 to 40 thousand each year. Some objective screening methods,such as auditorybrainstem response and otoacoustic emissions, can be more expensive than usingtrained people to perform behavioral screening. A portable “Behavioral infantScreening Audiometer”was designed by the authors. This audiometer can deliver different frequency and itensity sounds to the infants. The operator judges whether theinfant’s hearing is normal by his or her behavioral response,typically a head turn.Infants from three city communities in Beijing were screened in the communityclinics. The only criterion used for screening was that the inrants be between the ageof 26 and 36 weeks old. A total of 520 inrants were screened,and 43(8．3%) of themfailed. It took an average of 3 minutes to test an infant. Follow-up otoscope,auditory brainstem response audiometry and impedance audiometry in the First ClinicalCollege of Beijing Medical University on these 43 infants showed that 6 (1．15 % ) ofthem had a hearing loss and 37 of them had normal hearing. Follow-up on abovementioned tests were also performed on 50 infants from a control group that hadPassed the initial screening. None of them had hearing loss. The sensitivity of thisbehavioral screening was 100% and the speciticity of it was 92．8%. These resultssuggest that behavioral hearing screening is suitable for infants.
展开▼
