Hearing impairment in patients with major thalassemia in Southern Khorasan Province, 2007

Major beta thalassemia is the most common hereditary anemia in our country, especially in the shores of Caspian Sea, Oman and the Persian Gulf. Hearing impairment is one of its complications. This study was aimed to evaluate the hearing impairment in thalassemic patients in South Khorasan province.

This descriptive-analytic and cross sectional study was performed on the 32 major thalassemic patients in South Khorasan province in year 2007. Personal and clinical data were collected from the patient's file in the certain disease department of Valiasser Hospital. Clinical examination and hearing tests were done by an odiometrist and ENT specialist to evaluate the hearing status of the patients. Data were analyzed by means of SSPS (version 15)using independent Student-t test at the significant level of P<0.05.

The mean age of the studied patients was 9.3±1.4 years (range: 2-17.5 years). Fourteen patients were female. Abnormal audiogram, tympanogram and otoscopy were observed in 10.9%, 31.2% and 18.7% of the examined ears, respectively. Normal hearing, sensory neural hearing loss and conductive hearing loss were observed in 81.2%, 9.4% and 9.4% of patients, respectively. Overall, the prevalence of hearing impairment in this study was approximately 20%.

In order to prevent and to treat the hearing complications of thalassemia earlier regular and periodical monitoring of auditory function in all thalassemic patients is recommended.