Incidence of hearing disorders in fifth-year primary school students of Semnan in the academic year 2002-2003

ABSTRACT

Congenital or acquired hearing disorders may cause conductive or sensory-neural low hearing. In addition, non-sufficient development of Eustachian tube and mastoid cells old may cause conductive hearing disorders in children under 12 years old. Thus, performing hearing screening studies in this range of ages may help us to identify the children with hearing disorders. By detecting the type of hearing disorders, it is possible to help these children in their learning procedure. By considering these, the present study has been designed to investigate the hearing conditions in the primary school children [fifth level] of Semnan city. In order to determine the prevalence of hearing impairment in primary school children [fifth level], this study of 2081 children was performed in two stages. In the first stage, these children were screened by otoscopy, pure tone audiometry [three frequencies of 500, 1000 and 2000 Hz at 20 dB]. In the next stage, the suspected students with hearing loss referred to the audiometry clinic to undergo a complete tests including; 1] speech audiometric tests, 2] audiometric tests with frequencies of 250, 500, 1000, 2000, 4000 and 8000 Hz, and 3] tympanometry tests to determine the type of hearing loss. The results indicate 6.9% of impacted cerumen, 17.9% of slight cerumen, 3.6% of tympanic disorder and 4.1% of hearing loss among the fifth-level students, with significantly higher hearing loss in the south area compared to the other area [P<0.05]. The percentage of impacted cerumen was twice in the student girls, compared to the boys [P<0.05], while the percentage of observed tympani disorder was five times in the boys compared to the girls [P<0.01]. No difference was seen between boys and girls students in term of observed hearing loss. The obtained results showed the presence of impact cerumen, tympani disorder and hearing loss in the fifth level primary school children which indicate the importance of performing such a screening studies and also planning the health training programs for preventive care of hearing loss in the school and family