School-entry Screening Program for Ear and Hearing Problems in Tikrit, Iraq

Introduction: Hearing is the most essential perceptive sense for child development, especially in the childhood period, facilitating the ability of the child to interact with the surrounding environment and other persons. Hearing deprivation can have dangerous complications on different aspects of childhood development, like acquisition of speech and language and pre-reading skills. This study aimed at performing hearing screening of children aged 6 years to detect the prevalence, incidence, and degree of hearing loss in this age group. Patients and methods: This is a cross sectional study, which involved a randomly selected sample of 425 students from primary school children in Tikrit, of age of school entry (6 years); 850 ears, were examined and screened for ear and hearing problems. A questionnaire was designed to collect information concerningpatients' age, history of impairment of hearing, duration, onset, family history of ear problems (including impairment of hearing, discharging ear, vertigo, otalgia, nasal obstruction, recurrent tonsillitis), prenatal, natal and post natal period history, and impaired performance in school or disabilities of learning. Full E.N.T examination was done stressing on the ear examination. For all students with risk factors and having clinical hearing problems, pure tone audiometery was carried out. Results: This study involved screening of a randomly selected number of (425) students and examination of 850 ears at the main primary health care center inTikrit city. Females constituted 342 (80.6%) versus 83 (19.4%) males. Impacted wax was found in 3 patients but they were excluded from the study because they regained hearing function after removal of wax. Hearing loss was found in 30 students, (7.1%) of the study sample. Hearing Impairment (HI) was found in thirty students from a total of 425 students (7.1%) in this age group, twenty eight of the Hearing Impaired students (6.63%) had conductive hearing loss, and the remaining two students between (0.47%) had Sensori Neural Hearing Loss (SNHL). Conclusion: The commonest type of hearing loss in children is Conductive Hearing Loss (CHL) which is amenable for medical or surgical treatment. But the SNHL is due to genetic or postnatal causes and is usually permanent and needs hearing aids to improve school performance and normal social communication ability.