Steady-state auditory evoked responses in audiological diagnosis in children: a comparison with brainstem evoked auditory responses

Auditory Steady-State Responses (ASSR) are being recognized as a promising technique in the assessment of hearing in children. AIM: To investigate the agreement level between results obtained from ASSR and click-ABR in a group of children with sensorineural hearing loss, in order to study the clinical applicability of this technique to evaluate the hearing status in young children. STUDY DESIGN: clinical prospective with a cross-sectional cohort. MATERIALS AND METHODS: 15 children aged between two and 36 months and with diagnosis of sensorineural hearing loss. The correlation between the responses of the two tests was evaluated by intraclass correlation coefficient and McNemar test comparing the probability of responses in both tests. RESULTS: The correlation coefficients were: 0.70; 0.64; 0.49; 0.69; 0.63 and 0.68 respectively for frequencies of 1, 2, 4, 1–2, 2–4 and 1–2-4kHz. In McNemar test p = 0.000, indicating that the probability of obtaining responses in both tests was not equal, but greater for the ASSR. CONCLUSION: we found good agreement between the techniques among the four frequencies evaluated, suggesting that both tests may be complementary. However, the ASSR was able to obtain additional information in cases of severe and profound hearing losses, adding important data to the management of these children, providing greater accuracy to the audiological diagnosis.