Hearing loss and ear disorders in Malaysian school children

In Malaysia 1,307 randomly selected primary school children were screened to find out the prevalence of hearing loss and middle ear disorders. Seventy-six students (5.81%) failed the screening audiometric test. There were 95 students (7.26%) with middle ear disorders. History of ear discharge was absent in 24 out of 57 cases with CSOM (42.11%) (P less than 0.001). Forty-three out of 95 children having middle ear disorders passed the screening audiometric test (P less than 0.01 Fisher exact test). Screening audiometric test fails to detect about 46% of cases with middle ear disorders. Screening audiometric test and otological examination if conducted by the school health medical officers regularly will be able to detect almost all the cases with hearing loss and middle ear disorders.