Hearing Impairment in the Cerebral Palsy

Abstract

It is not an easy task to find out the fundamental causes whether or not the hindrance to the power of expression of a cerebrally palsied infants really due to the paralysis on the limbs movements, or due to speech impediment, or because of the accompanied hearing loss, or mainly due to the delay of his mental development.
Many reports have been made by those reporters as Taguchi (1958), Imanishi (1960), Hiroto (1956), Byers (1955), and Fisch (1955) to the effect that cerebral palsy very offenly causes sensitive hearing loss. However, only few researches have been done in the field of infants. This time, at the Tokyo Infant Nursing Hospital, we conducted audiometry to those infants who had been suffering from considerable heavy cerebral palsy, and had diversified study regarding the frequency of the accompanied hearing loss in cerebral palsy, relation between the type of cerebral palsy and the hearing loss, and the difference of mental development profil due the existence of difficulties in hearing.