Early hearing aid fitting – Key to better education for school going special children with hearing impairment

Introduction: 10% of the world population has hearing impairment. the most common association for this neurological impairment is considered to be consanguineous marriages. our study aim is to find the impact of late advice and fitting of hearing aid on the level of schooling of special children and the rate at which consanguinity is related to congenital hearing loss. materials & methods: this is a cross sectional survey conducted on special children participating in a free ent examination camp conducted for the special children. 50 children with hearing impairment as the single disability were selected for the questionnaire based survey. results: fifty six percent children were fitted with hearing aid at the ages of 1-2 years,only twelve percent (6 participants) were able to communicate verbally; this is when speech therapy was also received along with a hearing aid. this had a p-value of 0.001. they also had the most age appropriate school years. thirty eight of the participants gave a history of consanguineous marriage which is seventy six percent. conclusion: the children who had the diagnostic workup completed and hearing aid fitted at 2-4 years,not only did well in developing verbal communication. they also did better at school. another important factor in speech development is speech therapy after the fitting of hearing aid. without speech therapy the maximum benefit cannot be achieved from the hearing aid device. the frequency of hearing impairment being associated with consanguineous marriage in our study is seventy six percent which is even higher than the regional figures for this problem. © 2015,liaquat university of medical and health sciences. all rights reserved.