Current services fail patients with hearing and balance disorders

7 February 2008

A new working party report from the Royal College of Physicians says that patients with hearing and balance disorders can wait years to be seen by an appropriate specialist, and often remain undiagnosed and inadequately managed.

Hearing and Balance Disorders: Achieving excellence in diagnosis and management was produced by a multidisciplinary working party, taking evidence from a wide variety of sources.

The report says that patients who should be referred to an audiovestibular physician supported by a specialist multidisciplinary team are frequently referred to other  specialists because there is no audiovestibular physician or adequately staffed multidisciplinary team available in their locality. 

(Audiovestibular medicine is the medical discipline concerned with the investigation, diagnosis and management of non-surgical disorders of hearing and balance, including tinnitus, in both children and adults.)

The report recommends:

• a reorganised multidisciplinary service model with improved medical support
• an increase in the number of audiovestibular physicians and paediatricians  
• a greater emphasis on the specialty in medical training.

To meet the NHS targets of rapid, easy access to medical care, the report proposes a three-tier multidisciplinary managed network of care for hearing and balance disorders.  A healthcare scientist/GP-led primary care service should be developed and have access to and support from hospital centres, with audiovestibular physicians as part of the MDT. These centres, in turn, will be linked to tertiary centres with state-of-the-art facilities and medical and non-medical staff with supraspecialty expertise. This will enable rapid, high quality care close to the patient's home for the most routine cases, with seamless, prompt and direct access to supraspecialist care for complex cases, as required by current NHS directives.

Source: Royal College of Physicians press release
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