Pre-School Hearing Screening in a Selected School in Korle Bu, Ghana

Abstract

Background: Hearing impairment has detrimental effects on the linguistic and educational development of children. In developing countries routine screening programmes for hearing impairment is minimal. Aim: The aim of the study was to screen pre-school pupils for hearing loss and related ear pathologies and determine the prevalence of hearing loss at test frequencies for purposes of early management and intervention. Methods: Across sectional study design was adopted to purposively sample and screen 150 preschool pupils aged 3 – 5 years of a nursery school via otoscopic examinations and pure tone screening audiometry. The audiological screening was conducted in a quiet environment with a 30dBHL and 25dBHL pass/refer criteria at 500 Hz and 1 kHz to 6 kHz respectively. Results: The highest prevalence of hearing loss were registered at 500 Hz (14%) and 6000 Hz (9%), while a prevalence of 6% -7% was recorded for test frequencies of 1000 Hz – 4000 Hz. Statistical analysis via chi-square tests established no significant association between pure tone hearing screening and age and gender of the pre-school children for both ears at different test frequencies (500 Hz – 6000 Hz). Conclusions: The results from the study affirmed that hearing screening was very necessary at the pre-school level and provides a baseline for building a more comprehensive pre-school hearing screening protocol for early identification and detection of hearing loss Keywords: Pre-school pupils, pure tone audiometry, otoscopic examination, hearing loss, prevalence.