Objective:

To establish the criteria validity of a tool to detect hearing loss in Colombian children.

Methodology:

Concordance study in 160 children between 5-10 years old who had their hearing assessed using two tests: the “Low-cost detection tool to identify and classify hearing loss”, designed in Brazil, and the “Tonal Audiometry” as the gold standard. The sensitivity and specificity of the tool and the estimation of the agreement between the two tests were determined using the kappa index.

Results:

The “Low cost detection tool to identify and classify hearing loss” presented a sensitivity of 35%, specificity of 25%, a positive predictive value of 12%, negative predictive value of 56% and a kappa index of -0.24.

Conclusion:

The “Low-cost detection tool to identify and classify hearing loss” has little capacity to correctly classify the patient as truly ill and the healthy as truly healthy. Furthermore, the poor concordance between the two tests does not allow it to be classified as a valid tool for identifying and classifying hearing loss in Colombian children. It is therefore recommended that any screening or diagnostic method must comply with the validation process before being applied to the population. The prevalence of hearing loss found was 23.1%.

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