Publication:

Hearing among children with neurological disorders

Background Neurologic disorders are not rare in our environment but studies determining the hearing of these children are almost non- existent. This study therefore is to determine the prevalence of hearing loss in these children and also determine the care seeking attitude of the parents/guardians concerning the hearing.

Methods A hospital based descriptive study of all children attending the children neurologic clinic of university of Port Harcourt teaching hospital. A semi structured questionnaire was administered to parents / guardians who gave their consent for their children to be recruited into the study. Hearing loss in the children was taken as reported by the parents/guardians. Data collected were then entered into Microsoft Excel and then exported to the IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20 for statistical analysis.

Results The study comprised 49 children; 29 males and 20 females. Age range was from 8months to 18years.  Age group 1-5 years comprised the majority of the study population. Commonest neurological disorder seen was childhood epilepsy n=27, 55.1%. Prevalence of hearing loss was 26.5%. Children with childhood epilepsy had 15.4% having hearing loss while children with cerebral palsy, autistic spectrum disorder and microcephaly had 50% hearing loss recorded. Maternal illness during pregnancy was significantly related to the hearing loss with a p value = 0.045 and presence of neonatal illness with p value =0.009.  Only 7.7% was formally treated while 92.3% had no form of treatment whatsoever.

Conclusions Childhood epilepsy was the commonest type of neurologic disorder seen while highest point prevalence for hearing loss was in cerebral palsy. Majority of parents/caregivers did not seek medical care concerning the hearing loss neither were there any form of treatment given to the children.