Incidence of children with hearing impairment requiring hearing aids in early childhood

Abstract

With the suburbs of Ibaraki Medical Center (Mito city where the centre is located, and six towns adjacent to Mito city) as the target region, a survey was conducted concerning children aged under six with hearing impairment, who were asked by the center to use hearing aids. Of the 46,914 people born in the target region between 2000 and 2007, 78 had hearing impairment ; thus, the proportion of children with hearing impairment was 0.166%. Of this, about 75% had sensorineural hearing loss. With regard to the degree of hearing impairment, there were 41 (52.6%) children with light-to-moderate hearing impairment, and 37 (47.4%) children with severe hearing impairment, that is, 0.087% and 0.079% of births respectively. There were 46 cases (59.0%) with no risk factors of hearing impairment and 32 cases (41.0%) with one or more risk factors. Thus, the number of cases with no risk factors were higher, that is, 0.098% of births. Of those cases that underwent newborn hearing screening, about 20% had passed.