The International Tinnitus Journal

Factors Affecting Age of Diagnosis and Rehabilitation Intervention in Children Receiving Cochlear Implant

Background and Objective: Age of cochlear implantation (CI) is an important factor for restoring normal auditory processing and different language skills so that early diagnosis of hearing loss significantly influences the rate of developmental skills in these children. The present study aimed to investigate different factors affecting the age of hearing loss diagnosis and CI in children with hearing loss.
Methods: This was a descriptive cross-sectional trial conducted on the children with hearing loss that underwent CI (n=252) in the Khuzestan Cochlear Implant center, Ahvaz, Iran during 2012 to 2015. The demographic data of children and parents, age of diagnosis, application of hearing aid, and rehabilitation therapy were collected through a questionnaire during the regular visits of the patients. The data were analyzed using statistical package SPSS (Windows, version 18).The normality of data and homogeneity of variances were evaluated through Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Leven tests, respectively. Then, T-test was used to evaluate the statistically significance of the difference and Pearson correlation coefficient to determine the relationship between the quantitative variables.
Results: The mean age of diagnosis was 10.7 months (range 0.1 to 60 months). Of 252 patients, 131 (52%) were male and 121 (48%) were female (p=0.98) and 123 patients (50.2%) had a positive family history of hearing loss or deafness (p<0.0001). In addition, 17 patients (6.9%) had a favorable economic status, while 96 (38.9%) had a moderate and 134 (53.2%) a low economic status. Interestingly, 78.8% of the deaf children were from parents of consanguineous marriages, and 12.2% from non-consanguineous unions. Of the six studied variables, only family history and family relationship variables showed significant relationship with age of diagnosis of hearing loss.
Conclusion: Providing comprehensive basic information and increased awareness may help all parents, even those with low socioeconomic status and educational level, to detect hearing loss in their newborns as early as possible. This approach could prevent the consequent adverse effects of hearing loss on psychological, social, and social dimensions as well as on educational achievement in childhood.