Journal article
Cross-sectional epidemiology of hearing loss in Australian children aged 11-12 years old and 25-year secular trends
J Wang, CMP Le Clercq, V Sung, P Carew, RS Liu, FK Mensah, RA Burt, L Gold, M Wake
Archives of Disease in Childhood | BMJ PUBLISHING GROUP | Published : 2018
Abstract
Objective: In a national study of Australian children aged 11-12 years old, we examined the (1) prevalence and characteristics of hearing loss, (2) its demographic risk factors and (3) evidence for secular increases since 1990. Methods: This is a cross-sectional CheckPoint wave within the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. 1485 children (49.8% retention; 49.7% boys) underwent air-conduction audiometry. Aim 1: hearing loss (≥16 decibels hearing level (dB HL)) was defined in four ways to enable prior/future comparisons: high Fletcher Index (mean of 1, 2 and 4 kHz; primary outcome relevant to speech perception), four-frequency (1, 2, 4 and 8 kHz), lower frequency (1 and 2 kHz) and highe..
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Awarded by National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) of Australia (1041352, 1109355), The Royal Children's Hospital Foundation (2014-241), the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, The University of Melbourne, the National Heart Foundation of Australia (100660) and Financial Markets Foundation for Children (2014-055, 2016-310). The funding bodies did not play any role in the study. The following authors were supported by the NHMRC: VS (Early Career Fellowship 1125687), PC (Centre of Research Excellence in Child Language 1023493), RSL (Postgraduate Scholarship 1114567), FKM (Career Development Fellowship 1111160), LG (Early Career Fellowship 1035100) and MW (Senior Research Fellowship 1046518). VS was additionally supported by a Cottrell Research Fellowship from the Royal Australasian College of Physicians; CMPC by a Ter Meulen Grant from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences; RAB by the HEARing Cooperative Research Centre, established and supported under the Cooperative Research Centres Program, an Australian Government Initiative; and MW by Cure Kids New Zealand.