First Place—Resident Clinical Science Award 1998: Parents cannot detect mild hearing loss in children

Abstract

Otitis media with effusion is among the most common illnesses of childhood and is often associated with chronic or persistent middle ear effusion (MEE). Our goal was to develop and validate a self-administered parent survey that would identify children at high risk for mild hearing loss caused by MEE. We evaluated 115 children. Parents rated their child's hearing using the HL-7, a 7-item self-administered survey, and a global visual-analog scale. Static admittance and gradient were recorded. Test-retest reliability, internal consistency, and validity of the HL-7 were compared with the 4-frequency pure-tone average (PTA) hearing level (HL) for the better hearing ear. The HL-7 had good test-retest reliability and internal consistency. Survey scores correlated well with the global hearing rating ( R = 0.67, P < 0.001) but did not correlate with PTA ( R = 0.10, P = 0.29). Tympanometric gradient was unrelated to ear-specific PTA, but not abnormal static admittance (<0.2 cc), which produced a mean 7-dB HL decrease in hearing (ANOVA, P = 0.02). The HL-7 is a reliable and internally consistent measure of parent perception of child hearing, but unfortunately these perceptions are inaccurate for mild hearing loss. Abnormal static admittance is a risk factor for hearing loss.