Prevalence of permanent childhood hearing impairment

doi:10.1136/bmj.324.7330.172

BMJ 2002;324:172 ( 19 January )

Letters

Prevalence of permanent childhood hearing impairment

Family friendly hearing seervices are needed in the United Kingdom

Pilot programme in Australia shows promising results

Family friendly hearing seervices are needed in the United Kingdom

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ We are the parents of a baby with profound sensorineural deafness, and the article by Fortnum et al rang many bells.¹The absence of universal screening of newborn infants seems anational scandal to us. If it had been in place we would not havewaited nearly a year to discover that our baby has profound deafness.A year is a long time to lose when the early years are criticalto the development of language and speech. The family friendlyculture and seamless collaboration aspired to in the pilot protocolsfor universal screening seem a long way off. Lack of urgency fromhealth professionals, a system that designs delay into it ratherthan managing delay out, and no real focus on customers or familiesare the dominant characteristics of the health service we haveencountered.

Simple changes could make all the difference. Medical professionals are still dictating . . . [Full text of this article]

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Prevalence of permanent childhood hearing impairment in the United Kingdom and implications for universal neonatal hearing screening: questionnaire based ascertainment study • Commentary: Universal newborn hearing screening: implications for coordinating and developing services for deaf and hearing impaired children: Heather M Fortnum, A Quentin Summerfield, David H Marshall, Adrian C Davis, John M Bamford, Adrian Davis, Christine Yoshinaga-Itano, and Sally Hind
BMJ 2001 323: 536. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]