A three-level hearing screening program for school children.
This study reports the results of a hearing screening program that was conducted in a number of schools in Alexandria region in the school year 1997-1998. Schools were classified according to location into urban and suburban schools. Screening was done in three separate levels. In the first level, screening was done by health visitors in classrooms. To pass the screening in this level, the student had to indicate hearing of 30, 30, 25 & 25 dB tones at 1000, 2000, 4000 & 8000 Hz, respectively. A total of 6180 students were screened in this level, and only 10% of them (614 students) failed. The failing students were referred for the second level of screening in Sporting Hospital for School Students. The screening was done by trained health visitors in sound treated rooms, and to pass this level the child had to indicate hearing of 25 dB tones at 250, 500, 1000, 2000, 4000 & 8000 Hz. From 225 students who attended this level, only 75 students passed. The failing students were assumed to have a hearing problem and were referred for audiologic diagnosis by a consultant audiologist in the third level. The number of students attending the third level were 67 students and all of them had a hearing deficit. In 44 of them occluding wax was the cause of failure and upon its removal they proved to have normal hearing. Twenty three students had hearing loss due to secretory otitis media, chronic suppurative otitis media, or sensory neural hearing loss. The estimated prevalence of hearing loss in school children in this study ranged between 1.17 and 2.59%.