Evaluation of School-age Hearing Screening Applications: The Tele-audiological Perspective

Objective: Hearing health is one of the areas that should be considered especially in childhood. School-age hearing screening (SAHS) is important for the detection and prevention of hearing loss. The aim of our study is to compare the use of teleaudiological applications for SAHS with standard SAHS applications and to determine possible similarities or differences between the methods. Methods: The study was carried out with a total of 224 students who were first-year students in the same primary school within the borders of Istanbul. The study was completed in two phases with a test session at 15-day intervals. In the first stage, video-otoscope images of all individuals who would be subjected to standard SAHS were recorded and tympanometry test was performed. In the second stage, SAHS results were recorded with the tele-audiological method. Results: According to the tympanometry results obtained from the participants, it was determined that the rate of abnormal hearing was 4.5%. According to the video-otoscope results, which were evaluated as asynchronous, the number of students suspected of dense earwax plug and membrane pathology was 6.7% in the left ear and 5.8 in the right ear. According to the SAHS method results, the average rate of passing and failing the test in the standard method was 12.9% in the right ear, and 12.9% in the left ear. According to the results of the tele-audiological method of the same student group, the rate of failing the test was 16.1% in the right ear and 15.2 in the left ear. Conclusion: Measuring tele-audiologically or using the standard method did not affect the test results. Accordingly, the test result is independent of whether the test is performed with the tele-audiological or standard method.