Parental Judgement of Hearing Loss in Infants With Cleft Palate

Abstract

Objective: To investigate whether reported parental concern is supported by hearing assessment findings in children with cleft palate. To describe this population by examining the relationship between cleft type, middle ear status, and hearing loss. Design: Retrospective consecutive case note review. Setting: Tertiary institutional regional cleft center. Patients: Consecutive cases of 194 babies born with cleft palate and referred to the specialist center from January 2009 and December 2013. Following exclusions, data from 155 infants were included for analysis. Interventions: Documented parental concern in ear, nose and throat (ENT) and speech and language therapy case notes were compared to hearing assessment findings. Findings from otoscopic examination, tympanometry, and hearing assessment were analyzed with respect to cleft type. Results: Parental concern is not always accurately reflected by objective assessment particularly when no concern is reported. Analysis of the cohort examined suggests that cleft type is not related to middle ear findings or hearing. Conclusions: It is helpful to be aware of parental concern and clinicians should consider that parental reports may not be accurately reflected by test results. As cleft type was not found to substantially influence middle ear status or hearing it is not recommended to adapt speech and language advice offered to families according to cleft type. Follow-up studies to increase participant numbers would support a statistical analysis.