Epidemiological Profile of Hearing Deficiency in a Tertiary Care Hospital (2019-2022)

Abstract

Abstract Introduction This study is an attempt to view the demographic profile of individuals presenting with hearing loss in an urban referral hospital with the help of available database of pure tone audiometry results over a three years period. Materials and methods It is adescriptive epidemiologicalstudy over a period of 3 years conducted in the Department of Otorhinolaryngology (ORL) of an urban referral hospital.The subjects presented with a complain of hearing loss were investigated with pure tone audiometry. Subjects below 10 years of age or with gross mental or physical disabilities were excluded. The results of pure tone audiometry done were analyzed followed by systematic analysis. Results A total number of 3536individuals inclusive of1980 males and1556 females were studied. Nearly, 570 individuals suffered B/L hearing loss (16%) which was again mostly Sensori-neural. Sensori-neural hearing loss was the most common hearing loss near about 52%.Mixed Hearing loss accounted for 13%.Conductive hearing loss accounted for 35 %. Mild hearing loss (25-40dB) accounted for maximum bulk of the patients.The bulk of the population comprised of people in their middle age (30-60) and elderly (>60 years). Conclusion The demographic profile of hearing loss in an urban population is the ground work for any comprehensive planning to resolve the issue. In our study the increased burden of mild to moderate sensorineural hearing loss as seen in the elderly population and increased prevalence of conductive hearing loss as seen in the young population shows us how respective management protocols can be instituted for the target populations.

Keywords

• Audiometry
• Hearing loss
• Demography
• Pure tone