Use of the ages and stages questionnaire in young children who are deaf/hard of hearing as a screening for additional disabilities

Background

Children with sensorineural hearing loss have a high rate of additional disabilities beyond those expected by the impact of hearing loss on language and are identified later than children without hearing loss. Identifying these developmental delays and allowing earlier implementation of interventions specific to these concerns would improve care.

Aims

To determine whether the Ages and Stages Questionnaire© (ASQ) can identify unmet needs or unidentified developmental delays among young children with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss.

Subjects

Fifty children with any degree of bilateral sensorineural hearing loss, 6 months to 36 months of age recruited from a tertiary referral center and regional early intervention programs for children who are deaf/hard of hearing.

Outcome measures

The ASQ and comprehensive developmental evaluations with the Revised Gesell Developmental Schedules.

Study design

Sensitivities and specificities of the ASQ were calculated.

Results

While 32% of our population had a developmental delay outside the domain of communication, the ASQ had poor sensitivity on the overall score without the communication domain as well as for fine motor, cognitive, personal–social domains. It had good sensitivity for the domains of communication and gross motor skills and good specificity (ranging 83–85%) on specific domains as well as for the overall score (70%).

Conclusions

The ASQ does not provide an effective mean for identifying additional developmental concerns in young children with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss. Further studies are needed to determine how to identify additional disabilities in a timely manner among young children with hearing loss.