RESULTS OF HEARING SCREENING IN SCHOOL AGE CHILDREN IN EASTERN POLAND

Skarżyński H (1), Kochanek K (1),  Senderski  A (1) , Sułkowski W (2).  

1) Institute of  Physiology and Pathology of Hearing Warsaw Poland
2) The Nofer Institute of Occupational Medicine (NIOM), Lodz, Poland

It is recommended to conduct hearing screening in school age children especially in areas with non well developed health care system however there is still debate concerning methods and organization of such a screening. The hearing screening program conducted last year in seven eastern provinces of Poland was aimed to detect children with conductive or sensory hearing loss in children from first grade of elementary schools and to raise the awareness of the parents and teachers about the consequences of delayed detection of hearing disorders and about the possibilities of early therapeutic intervention.

The hearing screening was conducted  by means of the device “Audiometer S” using air conduction pure tone audiometry for frequencies ranging from 250 to 8 kHz. Additionally to assess higher auditory functions adaptive speech inteligibility test and dichotic digits test were used. Parents filled out audiological questionnaire and additionally during the testing children were asked few questions.

In the period of three months 146 testers has tested 95320 children from 50541 elementary schools in rural areas of eastern Poland. 13, 1 % of children did not pass the pure tone audiometry screening test, 15 % of children did not pass the speech in noise test and dichotic digits test. After careful analysis of the results of individual tests for further diagnostic evaluation we referred 8432 children. We will present results of the detailed analysis of all audiometric tests and audiological questionnaire.

E-mail: a.senderski@ifps.org.pl