Monitoramento de crianças com indicadores de risco para a deficiência auditiva

Purpose: to describe the proposal of monitoring children in the first year of life, who were not identified in the newborn hearing screening program but had risk factors for hearing loss. Method: the study included 258 risk children who had obtained the result “pass” in the Universal Newborn Hearing Screening Program of Hospital Santa Isabel – Bauru/SP, from June to November 2008. It was applied by the telephone, a validated questionnaire in a previous study, containing questions about hearing and language. For each question there were two possible answers: “yes” or “no” and we considered “failure” to obtain at least one “no” answer. With such result, the child was scheduled to perform an immediate hearing evaluation. Results: the questionnaire was applied with 169 families; with the others, there was no contact. From the total, 164 (97,04%) obtained “passed” and five (2,96%) “failed”. Between these five children, only three showed up for hearing evaluation and one had no disorders; two presented conductive hearing loss. It was observed distinct prevalence among the risk factors and there was no relation (p>0,05) of the risk factors with the evasion in the monitoring process. Conclusion: the monitoring through a questionnaire applied by telephone proved to be feasible, however, it is necessary to develop strategies to support their execution.