RESULTS
The questionnaire was given to 87 ENT physicians (female: 21, male: 66). The mean age was 42.7 (the range was 27 - 68).
When classified according to their professional titles, 19 of the participants were residents, 53 were specialists, 6 were associate professors, and 9 were professors. Associate professors and professors were gathered in a single group under the name of faculty members. Of the participants, 28 were working in a state hospital (SH), 31 at a state university (SU), 14 at a private hospital (PH), and 5 at a private university (PU). Nine participants did not specify the institution where they worked.
The response rates of participants to pathologies according to their professional titles are given in Table 3. The highest number of “correct” responses was given to the SOM audiogram with 41%, and the lowest was given to the LVA audiogram with 0%. The highest number of “incorrect” responses were seen in the SSCD audiogram (82%) and the lowest in the SOM and MD audiogram (13%). Only the answers indicating the type of hearing loss (“undefined” answers) were seen the most in the MD audiogram (61%) and the least in the SSCD audiogram (2%). Approximately one-third (35.7%) of the participants expressed the type of hearing loss, not the pathology name. This ratio was almost the same in all groups.
The rate of the correct association of audiological findings with the pathology (“correct”) was 19.2% on average. Faculty members gave the highest number of “correct” answers with 26.7%, and experts gave the lowest (16.5%).
The mean of ”incorrect” response was found to be 38%. The highest ”incorrect” response rate was seen in faculty members (40.2%). This rate was 37.3% for specialists and 29.3% for residents. The rate of unanswered (NR) questions was 7.2%. This rate was 10.4% for specialists and 8% for residents. The only group that answered all the questions was the faculty members.
When the answers were evaluated according to the hospitals, the highest number of ”correct” answers came from SU (27.8%) and the lowest from SH (16.2%). The highest rate of “incorrect” answers came from those working in PU (60%), and the lowest among those working in PH and SH (36.8% and 37%, respectively). “Undefined” response rates were the lowest in PU (20%), and the highest in SH (38.2%) (Table 4).
When we grouped pathologies according to their frequency of occurrence (frequent: COM, SOM, MD; rare: ANSD, SSCD, LVA), the rate of “correct” response was found to be approximately 2.5 times higher in common pathologies than in rare pathologies (27.3% vs. 11%). On the other hand, the rate of “incorrect” response in rare pathologies was three times higher than in common pathologies (57% vs. 18.7%) (Table 5).