Characteristics of children with permanent mild hearing impairment

The report was intended to provide up-to-date information about permanent mild hearing impairment (HI) in early childhood. Altogether 33/250 children with a permanent mild HI in the better ear (average at frequencies of 0.5, 1, 2, 4 kHz greater than or equal to25-39 dB HL) were found during the 7-year period from 1994 to 2001 in the Outpatient Clinic of the Department Phoniatrics/Pedaudiology, University of Gottingen. Twenty-two of 33 children had a mild HI in one or both ears. The loss was sensorineural in 73% of the children (88% bilateral, 12% unilateral), and conductive in 27% (67% bilaterally, 33% unilaterally) because of ear malformations or a suspicion of middle ear anomalies. Clinical data and test performances were presented for these four types of mild HI. Altogether, standardized language assessment demonstrated no delays in receptive and expressive vocabulary ability development on average, although the acquisition of two-word phrases in infancy was in mean delayed. Nonverbal intelligence was within the normal range, and on average the children did not perform less well in central auditory processing than normal children. Provided that no additional handicaps were present, mild HI did not adversely affect speech/language development if the children were fitted with hearing aids after early identification of HI. Copyright (C) 2003 S. Karger AG, Basel.