• Desiree van den Hondel, Marlous J Madderom, Andre Goedegebure, Saskia J Gischler, Petra Mazer, Dick Tibboel, and Hanneke Ijsselstijn.
• Intensive Care and Department of Pediatric Surgery, Erasmus MC - Sophia Children's Hospital, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
• Pediatr Crit Care Me. 2013 Jan 1;14(1):62-9.

ObjectivesTo determine the prevalence of hearing loss in school-age children who have undergone neonatal extracorporeal membrane oxygenation treatment and to identify any effects of hearing loss on speech- and language development [corrected] .DesignProspective longitudinal follow-up study within the framework of a structured post-extracorporeal membrane oxygenation follow-up program.SettingOutpatient clinic of a level III university hospital.ResultsTone audiometry was performed by standardized protocol in 136 children aged 5-12 yrs. Hearing loss was considered clinically significant when >20 dB. Hearing was normal in 75.7% of children. Five children (3.7%) had bilateral sensorineural or combined hearing loss; three of them received special audiological care (2.2% of total sample). Of the 24 children with congenital diaphragmatic hernia, 19 (79.2%) had normal hearing and only two (8.3%) had mild sensorineural hearing loss, unilateral in one of them. Follow-up at 24 months of age had shown normal verbal and nonverbal developmental scores. Language development and intelligence median (range) scores at 5 yrs of age were also normal: receptive language development 104 (55-133), syntactical development 104 (68-132), and lexical development 101 (50-141) for 89 children; intelligence quotient 104 (68-132) for 106 children. Scores did not differ among those with normal hearing, mild hearing loss, and moderate-to-severe hearing loss (p = 0.800, p = 0.639, p = 0.876, and p = 0.886, for the respective developmental tests).ConclusionsWe found normal language development and intelligence in a cohort of neonatal extracorporeal membrane oxygenation survivors. The prevalence of bilateral sensorineural hearing loss was in accordance with that of a larger series in the United States-which exceeds the prevalence in the normal population.

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