Hypoxemia and auditory reaction time in congenital heart disease.

The purpose of this study was to determine if previously documented perfomances deficits of patients with cyanotic congenital heart disease are peculiar to centrallly mediated visual tasks or are also manifested on tests of other centrally mediated sensory functions such as hearing. A simple auditory reaction time test was, therefore, performed on 239 patients with congenital heart disease, 43 of whom were cyanotic. Results indicated that (a) there is no significant relationship between level of arterial oxygen saturation and auditory RT. (b) Auditory RT for the group as a whole declines until the mid-teens and then rises, a pattern at variance with that of normal subjects. (c) The audiroty RT of females was significantly higher, i.e., slower, than that of males.