Introduction
Hearing loss is common in society, which can have negative effects on speech, language development, and social communication.1 For patients with suspected hearing loss, early diagnosis is significant for subsequent clinical intervention. The auditory brain stem response (ABR) is an objective, non-invasive method to estimate auditory threshold and neurological diagnosis in clinics, and commonly used in infants and children who cannot complete a subjective audiologic assessment. Guidelines for Early Hearing Detection and Intervention Programs (EHDI) emphasized ABR is the gold standard for hearing diagnosis in children younger than 6 months of age.1,2 The successful completion of ABR is challenging for patients; as patients are required to sleep soundly during the procedure to minimize myoelectrical interference and get more accurate test results.3 For some patients, especially in infants and children, it is not easy to get spontaneous sleep despite preferential intervention, , so using the appropriate sedative agent in patients plays a significant role in the successful completion of the procedure.4
Chloral Hydrate is a non-opiate and non-benzodiazepine sedative-hypnotic drug, which widely used in otolaryngology, imaging, and other clinical departments over the past decades in China. However, concerns have been expressed about safety and effectiveness, particularly with regard to potential advert effects, such as vomiting, restlessness, sedation-induced hypoxemia, bradycardia and so on.3,5Nevertheless, Chloral Hydrate is considered safe and effective for patients undergoing painless diagnostic procedures with appropriate doses and settings.6
In the Hearing Center of our hospital, as most other hospitals, Chloral Hydrate has been used for sedation of patients in ABR tests for nearly 30 years. Although Chloral Hydrate sedation has a low incidence of severe adverse events and is considered safe, it is still important to assess adverse events that may occur. Therefore, the aim of this study was to report the sedation failure rate as well as the incidence of adverse events and to analyze the safety and effectiveness of Chloral Hydrate for the ABR test. Furthermore, this study aimed to identify the potential risk through a large sample of data and was expected to provide a reference for future practice.