Quality of Life among Adult Yemeni Patients with Hearing Loss
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- Category: Vol. 79, March 2011
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Quality of Life among Adult Yemeni Patients with Hearing Loss,MOHAMED Y. AL-MAHBASHI and YAHIA A. RAJA’A
Abstract
Objective: To associate the hearing loss with quality of life and to describe the pattern of hearing loss among adult patients presenting at Al-Thawra and Al-Kuwait Teaching Hospitals, Yemen.
Methods: There were 345 patients (aged 18 years and above) and another 345 healthy controls of comparable age. Patients presented to the ENT outpatient clinics during the period from November 2008 to May 2009. All patients were investigated for pure tone audiometry. Questionnaire was done by the team to evaluate the effect of hearing loss on QoL.
Results: The mean age of patients is 37.5±17.8 years. The malepatients were 213 (61.7%) and the female were 132 (38.3%). Urban were (65.2%) patients, rural (34.85%) patients. Educated were 211 (61.2%), housewife were 89 (25.8%), workers were 53 (15.4%). The common causes for hearing loss were inflammations 132 (38.3%), congenital 57 (16.5%), senile 56 (16.2%), 123 (35.7%) had mild hearing loss, 91 (26.4%) had moderate, 73 (21.2%) had severe and 58 (16.8%) had Profound. Patients using hearing aids are 28 (8.1%). There were 97 patients (28.1%) with problematic to very problematic QoL. Whereas only 33 of control individuals (9.6%) with problematic to very problematic QoL.
Conclusions: The common causes of hearing loss in adults were inflammations followed by congenital then senile hearing loss. Bilateral hearing loss is more than unilateral hearing loss. The majority of patients had mild hearing loss followed by moderate to the severe then profound hearing loss. There is association between hearing loss and decreased QoL. Non-hearing aid users were more than hearing aid users.