O uso das emissões otoacústicas como instrumento clínico para triagem auditiva de alunos da educação infantil e ensino fundamental

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to compare three methods of hearing assessment in children aged from 6 to 12 years and to suggest that children from 1 to 5 years can also be submetted to hearing assessment with preventive purpose and monitoring of this primordial sense of human communication. Auditory assessment was performed in 196 children aged from 1 to 5 years using tests tympanometry and otoacoustic emissions and 237 children aged 6 to 12 years using audiometry, tympanometry and otoacoustic emissions. The results showed that 17.3% of children aged from 1 to 5 years presented some type of hearing impairment, while only 3.4% of children aged from 6 to 12 years presented hearing loss. These results show that children between 1 and 5 years-old should perform periodically hearing screening because of the large number of hearing impairment in this group. Most schools ask the audiometric test for children who will begin the literacy period, but this type of examination is only routinely carried out in children older than 5 years-old. Evaluating through the correlation between the results of hearing in audiometry, otoacoustic emissions and tympanometry in children aged from 6 to 12 years, we showed that those children presented hearing loss in audiometry, also failed in otoacoustic emissions and presented abnormalíties in the middle ear. Some children had normal hearing, but presented abnormalities in otoacoustic emissions and in tympanometry. Based on these results, we propose a hearing screening program by combining tympanometry and otoacoustic emissions for children aged from 1 to 5 years.