Assessment of ear pathology and the impact of using hearing aids among Saudi deaf children

Abstract EN

This paper describes a method for establishing a correlation between ear pathology and hearing aid (HA) user complications.

1 documented all adverse complications in ear pathology, HA user and parent’s attitude towards their children’s benefits from using HA, as a continuous follow-up of the hearing impaired (HI) at AL-Amal Institutions in Riyadh, between January 1998 (unpublished) and continued until April 2003.

In the first study1 700 (boys and girls) Saudi students (85,43 %) were using HA of which only (61.6 %) obtained benefit from HA while (38.4 %) did not get any benefit, as it was concluded from the questionnaires filled by children and their parents.

In the second study in AL-Amal Institutions I added to my work a clinical part to additional measurement of ear pathology since March 2001.

Out of 150 boys in the second study2, the result was 55 ears were type B Tympanometry, 18 ears with compact wax and 3 children had perforations and discharge in the ear.

In the questionnaires, only (50.6%) of them showed benefit of using hearing aid with no big difference between boys in comparison to my first study of the institutions.

However, all the children have been taken the proper treatment for external and middle ear pathology.

In this (third) study 150 girls hearing impaired children of median age 10.1 years, (range 6.3 to 13.9 years) from one of AL-Amal institutions for deaf girls in Riyadh city, were examined.

This was undertaken to identify the impact of middle ear pathology as a result of using hearing aid determining the benefit of it and any issues related to HA, and also its amplification procedure and inference on hearing impaired children and their parents and impact on hearing impaired verbal communication.

The result showed that 35 ears were type B, 18 ears were type Cl and 23 ears required wax removal, while 222 ears were type A.

The outcomes in daily clinical practice can be monitored and this information can be used to direct changes in the process of ear care and hearing aid fitting.