Prevalence and pattern of hearing loss in children in house-held national

الملخص EN

Normal hearing in children provides the primary source for acquisition of language, speech and cognitive skills.

Objectives: To assess the prevalence of hearing loss and deafness among Egyptian children, since there are few hospital–based academic studies which give an idea about the magnitude of the problem in children.

Patients & Methods: This study targeted the Egyptian children aged from birth till the age of 14 years; six governorates were selected by random sampling to conduct the study.

The survey had 2 phases, Phase I was the screening field study where all subjects had ear examination, otoacoustic emission and tympanometery.

In phase II, failed subjects from phase I were referred to tertiary centers to complete the diagnostic workup.

The collected data was analyzed using the SPSS software. Results: A total of 1600 children aging between 0-14 years were screened in phase I of the study.

272 subjects were found to have hearing loss with OAE in this phase (17%).

In phase II, 221 subjects (13.8%) were proved to have hearing loss with an overall false positive rate of OAE 3.18% (51 subjects).

Comparing the results of the individual governorates, there was no significant difference between different governorates.

Among these 221 subjects with hearing loss, 132 were males (59.7%) and 89 were females (40.3%).

190 subjects (85.9%) had conductive hearing loss and 31 subjects had sensorineural hearing loss (14.1%).

174 patients had bilateral hearing loss (78.7%) and 47 had unilateral hearing loss (21.3%).

Conclusion: There is a significant effect of age on the occurrence of hearing loss especially in the age group 0 -4 which should direct attention to the importance of hearing screening in this age group