Hearing loss in speech-language delayed children

An infant begins to communicate with his/her environment from the first mon ths of life. However, true words do not appear until the age of 12-15 month s, following a rather predictable sequence. Delay or failure of normal lang uage development is not a rare situation in childhood and may be due to a v ariety of reasons. Among these, hearing undoubtedly plays a leading part in the language acquisition process. The purpose of this study was to assess the percentage of hearing-impaired children in a group of phenotypically he althy children presenting with speech-language delay. Between March 1993 an d March 1999, 726 speech-language delayed children were examined in our dep artment. In 72 of them, various diseases or syndromes had already been diag nosed and so they were excluded from the study. The remaining 654 apparentl y healthy children entered the study and underwent a thorough audiological assessment for determination of their hearing thresholds. Eighty-seven chil dren (13.3%) showed various degrees of hearing loss. Most of them (55 child ren, 8.4%) suffered from sensorineural hearing impairment; while in 32 chil dren (4.9%) a conductive hearing loss was discovered. The increased prevale nce of hearing impairment found in our population mandates a thorough heari ng evaluation for every case of speech-language delay, even for those child ren who show no evidence of other handicaps. This will help in the early di agnosis of hearing loss, allowing proper management to be instituted as ear ly as possible. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.