Evasion in the retest and follow-up stages of specific neonatal hearing screening during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Introduction: Newborn Hearing Screening (NHS) is one of the main allies in comprehensive child hearing health care, as it enables early diagnosis of hearing loss and timely intervention. With the SARS-CoV-2 virus pandemic, access to health care in general has been reduced, which has aggravated the issue of NHS dropout, which was already a concern. Objective: To verify the dropout rate of babies with risk factors for hearing loss (RFHL) at a NHS referral service during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: The sample consisted of 565 medical records of children with RFHL undergoing NHS. Evasion was considered when the child did not show up for the scheduled appointment, when the contacts informed in the medical records did not answer, when the contacts did not belong to those responsible for the child or did not exist. Results: There was a higher dropout rate in the follow-up stage after the retest than in another study prior to the pandemic and a high dropout rate in the follow-up stage in general. In the retest, the dropout rate was lower than that found in other studies. The dropout rate in the follow-up stage was higher than in the retest. Conclusion: The importance of analyzing NHS data during the pandemic period is evident, given that access to health, information and economic resources has been reduced. In this case, there was an increase in the dropout rate during the period studied, especially at the follow-up stage.