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.