[Deafness in adults. Study of practices in general medicine]

Deafness is a sensory disability responsible for communication disorder, sometimes impairing social life. In children, the hearing is an important concern for all stakeholders in early childhood (systematic neonatal screening, etc.). On the other hand, in the adult, it is rarely tested, and patients do consult when their audiometric status is already badly impaired. But their care is all the better if the deafness diagnosis is made early, as for the audio-prosthetic rehabilitation for example. Today, the general practitioner is the first link of the diagnostic and therapeutic management chain. The objective of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic practices of practitioners in front of deafness in adults.

This prospective study included 74 practitioners based in "Ile de France" interviewed using a multiple choice questionnaire (MCQ) on otoscopic and audiometric diagnostics and a Script Concordance test (SC) on clinical adult deafness situations validated by a 5 experts panel.

The obtained average score was 66.35% of correct answers to the MCQ and 47.76% to the SC.

In our study, the surveyed practitioners showed a good level of otoscopic and audiometric diagnosis in the MCQ. However, their answers were not concordant with those of the expert panel in the SC. They have been particularly poorly performing on issues related to functional signs and their use in a given clinical situation, often driving to establish an otoscopic misdiagnosis while their diagnostic recognition of a pathological eardrum in the MCQ was rather good. These results reflect a lack of confidence in their otoscopic diagnosis related to the lack of knowledge of the causes of deafness in adults and their symptoms.