Nazia Mumtaz, Ayesha Kamal Butt.
Parental Response to Benefits of Early Detection in Hearing Impaired Children in Pakistan.
J Riphah Coll Rehab Sci Jan ;01(01):17-20.

Background: Hearing impairment is amongst one of the four major disabilities recognized by WHO. It is a generic term including both deaf and hard of hearing which refers to persons with any type or degree of hearing loss that causes difficulty working in a traditional way. Being invisible disability, goes undetected and may deter early intervention and cause delay in speech and language development. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to ascertain the parental response regarding the benefits of early detection of children with severe to profound degree of hearing impairment. Methodology: A cross sectional study was conducted and 100 patients were recruited through convenient sampling. The study was conducted between January to July 2012 in various special schools of Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Lahore. The data was conducted through a structured questionnaire and analyzed through SPSS version 10.0 software programme for statistical analysis. Results: According to analyzed results 68% of parents responded in the affirmative and 32% did not support the benefits of early education. Conclusion: It is concluded that parents feel early detection of severe to profound hearing impairment is beneficial for children. Further work is required to explore the relationship between early detection and the age at which remedial treatment was sought by parents.

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