JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Pure tone screening (PTS) is considered the gold standard for hearing screening programs in school-age children. Mobile devices such as smartphones have the potential for audiometric testing.

Objective:

This study aimed to demonstrate a new approach to rapidly screen hearing status and provide stratified test values using a smartphone-based hearing screening app for each screened ear of school-age children.

Methods:

This was a prospective cohort study design. The proposed smartphone-based screening method and a standard sound-treated booth with PTS were used to assess 85 school-age children (170 ears). Sound-treated PTS involved applying four test tones to each tested ear: 500 Hz at 25 dB and 1000, 2000, 4000 Hz at 20 dB. The results were classified as “pass” (normal hearing in the ear) or “fail” (possible hearing impairment). The proposed smartphone-based screen employs twenty stratified hearing scales. Thresholds were compared with those of pure-tone audiometry.

Results:

A total of 85 subjects (170 ears), including 38 males and 47 females aged 12 years (mean 12, standard deviation [SD] 1.21), participated in the trial. Both screening methods produced comparable “pass” and “fail” results. The smartphone-based screening detected moderate or worse hearing loss (pure-tone audiometry average (PTA) >25 dB) accurately. The sensitivity and specificity of the smartphone-based screening method were calculated at 100% and 100%, respectively.

Conclusions:

The results of the proposed smartphone-based self-hearing test demonstrate high concordance with conventional PTS in a sound-treated booth. Our results suggest the potential use of the proposed smartphone-based hearing screening in a school-age population. Clinical Trial: The Institutional Review Board of Taipei Veterans General Hospital (2017-10-003CC) approved this study,