Hearing prosthesis donation program: year 2004 evaluation

Abstract

Hearing is one of the main channels by which the human being interacts with society, performing an essential role in the acquisition and development of speech and language. The objective of the present work was to evaluate the hearing prosthesis donation program at NAMI audiology service, aiming at subsidizing health education actions for the benefited population. In this work, a documentary, retrospective study was carried out, in which the data gathering was accomplished by using a secondary source (medical register) of the patients assisted by the program during the year 2004. One hundred and ten medical records were analyzed. The age group of the assisted population ranged from 7 months to 90 years of age, being 48 (43.63%) above 50 years old. The average waiting period to receive the hearing prosthesis was 3 months for 79 (71.82%) patients. Although it is a High Complexity hearing health program, which proclaims assistance for children under 3 years of age, it was observed that only 13 (11.81%) were younger than 5 years of age, however, in terms of a Medium Complexity health service, this aim was reached, having 97 assisted (88.19%) above 5 years of age. In conclusion, from the gathered data, the program failed in year 2004 in what concerns High Complexity goals, but was satisfactory in what refers to Medium Complexity aims and to the time between the evaluation and the prosthesis installation.