Auditory complaints and audiologic assessment in children with surgically repaired cleft lip and palate

introduction: at the initial consultation, the speech-language pathologist and audiologist may consider possible diagnostic hypotheses based on the child's history and the parents' complaint. aim:to investigate the association of hearing complaints with the findings obtained in the conventional audiologic assessment in children with cleft lip and palate. retrospective study. methods: we analyzed medical charts of 1000 patients with cleft lip and palate who underwent surgical repair between 1988 and 1995 at a mean age of 6 years 8 months. we excluded charts with records of inconsistent audiological responses and charts with missing data for any of the audiologic evaluations considered. thus, the sample consisted of 393 records. results: two hundred thirty-nine patients presented hearing loss in one or both ears, but only 3.8% reported hearing complaints. the most frequent were otorrhea followed by otalgia. there was no statistical significance between the complaint and gender (p = 0.26) nor between the complaint and hearing loss (p = 0.83). conclusion: this study showed no association between the hearing complaint and the conventional audiologic assessment.