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Prevalence of Ear Disease among School Children in Pondicherry, South India: A Cross-sectional Survey

Sarrath Rathnaraajan, Maharajan R, Raghu Nandhan and Mohan Kameswaran

Introduction: Preventable ear diseases have been an important health problem among children. It is a major public health concern in developing countries inspite of availability of various potent treatment modalities. It is essential to diagnose ear problems as early as possible in order to be managed appropriately. Ear problems may be compounded by the fact that children are dependent upon their parents, who due to various reasons may tend to ignore their problem and hence present late.

Methods: This was a cross-sectional survey carried out among school children aged 6-14 years in Pondicherry, a city in the southern part of India. Around 1470 children were screened (735 government school and 735 private school) and taken into the study for randomization. 105 children from each school were screened after fulfilling the inclusion criteria. The children were subjected to a brief history taking, ENT examination and Tuning Fork tests and further audiological assessment if it was warranted.

Results: The prevalence of ear disease was found equally distributed among both genders and had a higher prevalence at around 6 years. Ear disease was found in 47.21% and hearing loss was present among 34.70% of the study. Among them the commonest was impacted wax (64.41%), followed by secretory otitis media (9.32%), chronic otitis media with perforation (9.13%), eustachian catarrh (7.51%), acute otitis media (4.18%), otomycosis (2.37%), otitis externa (1.90%), foreign body (0.47%), preauricular lymphadenitis (0.38%) and furuncle (0.27%) respectively.

Conclusion: Hearing loss in early childhood can affect speech and language development, social and behavioural status, cognition and academic achievements of the child. Hence, the ideal tool in developing countries should be a well-designed screening program at various levels of educational system. This study focuses on one such attempt to assess the prevalence of hearing problems in an community, with the results emphasizing the importance of screening programs and the development of surveillance protocols.