[Results of screening for hearing disorders using the Ewing test].

Late developments support that deaf children have an urgent need for rehabilitation and hence for early search for hearing defects. One of the modalities to achieve this goal is mass screening of populations. In Belgium the long established well-baby-clinics provide a commodity for these programs. As most infants attend regularly these clinics, it was evident to perform here the testing procedure. The Ewing-test was chosen as the tool for the screening. We started about 1980. In this discussion the statistics from 1984 to 1986 from one province (West-Vlaanderen) are used. It appeared that approximately 60% of the 9-month old children are screened. After two failures these children are referred to their family doctor. About 1% of the children tested have a diagnostic examination. In this group we found a lot of children with middle ear problems. Although the screening was not set up to detect these children, we think it is useful that they come under medical control. A special program was started to see if the sensitivity of the test was good. Till now we could not find any case of a deaf child that did not fail the Ewing-test.