Behavioral Screening Tests to Detect Hearing Loss in School Aged Children: A Review

Corresponding author: Ratul Dey,Lecturer,Department of ENT, Guru Gobind Singh Medical College, [email protected] This article may be cited as:Dey R,Davessar JL,Kumar S and Sharma T.Behavioral Screening Tests to Detect Hearing Loss in School Aged Children: A Review.Int J Com Health and Med Res 2016;2(2):73-79 Article Received: 03-05-2016 Accepted On: 12-05-2016 NTRODUCTION Hearing impairment, if not identified early in life can lead to affected social, emotional, behavioural and cognitive spheres of any child. 1 The prevalence of hearing loss in school going children ranges from 5.7 % (NSSO, 1991) to as high as 12 %. 2 Though rural population has been found to be more affected as compared to urban, the incidence and prevalence of both are alarming. Identifying hearing loss as early as possible is important for better intervention. 3 This article is aimed to review various behavioural hearing screening tests advocated to be efficient in detection of hearing loss. Screening with pure tones Many researchers suggested pure tones as a screening tool. Some used it for group screening programme 4, 5 and few for individual screening. 2, 6,