Judith Lieu

Bio Judith E.C. Lieu, MD MSPH is Professor and Vice-Chair in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis Missouri, USA. She received her MD at Washington University in St. Louis and MSPH at St. Louis University School of Public Health. She completed her Otolaryngology residency at Washington University in St. Louis, clinical research fellowship in the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at Yale University, and Pediatric Otolaryngology fellowship at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. She is the Section Editor for Systematic and Evidence-based Reviews for the Laryngoscope. She is a practicing pediatric otolaryngologist. Her research interests include quality of life in children with otolaryngologic disorders, hearing loss in children, and improving the level of evidence in the otolaryngology literature.

Summary Hearing loss in children has been assessed traditionally with audiologic measures, such as pure tone thresholds, word recognition scores, and sound localization errors. Although the advances in hearing interventions and device development have produced enormous gains in speech and language development, audiologic outcomes do not address other aspects of child development and well-being. The child’s self-perception of disability or handicap due to using a device may affect their ability to function at school or on the playground, make friends, and influence their self-confidence. Additional effort to listen and comprehend at school may produce fatigue with cognitive tasks. These patient-reported outcomes deserve attention to nurture the development of the whole child, not just the hearing aspects.

The first part of this presentation will review some of the patient-reported outcomes that have been used to assess children with various degrees of hearing loss. The second part of the presentation will present data from an ongoing study that has used a quality of life survey in children with bilateral hearing loss using cochlear implants (CI) or CI combined with hearing aid.