PhD defence A.M.L. (Andrea) Bussé

In this thesis, that was embedded in the EUSCREEN study, a large-scale international aggregation of information on childhood hearing screening programmes was completed. To collect this data, an extensive international questionnaire was distributed amongst hearing screening experts in all countries in Europe. Information gathered from this questionnaire was supplemented with demographic data to better understand the variability and the rationale for the diversity across hearing screening programmes.
Choices made for newborn hearing screening protocols were related to socio-economic factors: health expenditure and human development index. Coverage in the first screening step was high, referral rates were lower when programmes screened later than at least 24 hours after birth and programmes with more screening steps that included aABR screening referred less infants to diagnostic assessment. Only a few countries performed childhood hearing screening after the newborn period. 

A model was developed to calculate and compare the cost-effectiveness of hearing screening programmes in a country, taking the local circumstances into account. In preparation of the implementation of a newborn hearing screening programme in Albania, this model compared several options. Hearing screening was successfully implemented in three provinces in Albania. Coverage of the hearing screening programme in Albania was high, but a large number of infants did not attend follow-up screening. The results of this implementation study will be fed back into the model to improve its predictions.

Due to corona, the PhD defences do not take place publicly in the usual way in the Senate Hall or in the Professor Andries Querido Room. The candidates will defend their dissertation either in a small group or online.