Investigation of hearing-impaired children in whom intervention was started at over 1-year-old

Abstract

　　With the wide implementation of newborn hearing screening (NHS) in Japan, it has become possible to start intervention for hearing-impaired children from the age of 0. On the other hand, there are still cases in which hearing loss is detected only in late childhood. In order to clarify the current situation and issues up to the start of intervention, we investigated the progress until the start of intervention in children enrolled at our facility during the 8-year period from 2014-2021, and selected cases in which treatment had been started at over 1 year of age for this study. When language delay was observed in infant health checkups, there were many cases in which hearing tests were delayed in the pass group as compared with the non-examination and the non-pass groups. In cases of mild hearing loss without language delay, there were cases in which the family consulted an otorhinolaryngologist regarding hearing problems, but no hearing tests were performed. In the event of any episode leading to suspicion of hearing loss, it is important to conduct hearing tests as soon as possible.