Assessing the efficacy of asynchronous telehealth-based hearing screening and diagnostic services using automated audiometry in a rural South African school.
Samantha M Govender, Maurice Mars
PMID 30035608WHAT IT FOUND
Automated telehealth hearing screening in a rural school missed 8 ears with hearing loss, yielding 65.2% sensitivity.
While specificity was perfect, the high false-negative rate means this screening method alone may miss children with mild or low-frequency loss.
Key findings
01The automated screening test had low sensitivity (65.2%), failing to identify 8 ears that were diagnosed with hearing loss.
02Specificity was 100%, meaning no children without hearing loss were incorrectly referred.
03The majority of identified hearing losses were unilateral and mild, which are often difficult to detect.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study did not counterbalance the order of testing (screening always preceded diagnostic), which may have caused a learning effect or fatigue influencing the results. Distractibility of younger participants (6-year-olds) during testing may have contributed to the false-negative rate. The sample was drawn from a single rural school, limiting generalisability to other contexts. The authors note that ambient noise levels, while monitored, might have affected low-frequency detection during the diagnostic phase.
Declared interests
No specific conflicts of interest or funding declarations were present in the provided text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the 100% specificity as evidence that this screening tool is perfect. The 65.2% sensitivity indicates it missed 8 out of 23 children with hearing loss, meaning it is not currently reliable enough to replace comprehensive diagnostic evaluation in this population.