Parents sue over failures in child hearing service at NHS Lothian

More than a dozen families are seeking compensation following "significant failures" at NHS Lothian's hearing service for children.

The health board apologised to more than 155 families after an independent investigation found serious problems diagnosing and treating hearing loss.

Sophie was born partly deaf and failed repeated hearing tests for years. Her family say no help was offered by the paediatric audiology department at NHS Lothian who kept saying she would be fine. But her parents say she is not.

Sophie is now seven. Her speech and language has not developed fully and is sometimes hard to understand. Her confidence has been affected.

Her mum Sarah said: "They failed Sophie. You kind of trust what they were doing, you thought maybe she doesn't need hearing aids, maybe she will just catch up and now she's almost eight years old and she's still not caught up and you think 'OK, maybe there were mistakes made then'."

An independent investigation by the British Academy of Audiology (BAA), published in December last year, found "significant failures" involving 155 children over nine years at NHS Lothian.

Several profoundly deaf children were diagnosed too late for vital implant surgery. The health board has "apologised sincerely" to those affected.

The BAA looked at more than 1,000 patient records finding "significant failures" in almost 14% of them.

The BAA said it found "no evidence" that national guidelines and protocols on hearing tests for children had been followed or consistently applied "at any point since 2009".

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Source: BBC News, 2 March 2022