Abstract
Causes of Deafness IT has been estimated that 10 per cent of the population of the United States have impaired hearing. A study of the condition has been made on 487 children in the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf. The investigation was undertaken by the Office of Child Hygiene Investigations of the United States Public Health Service and the Otologic Research Laboratory of the Abington Memorial Hospital. A preliminary account of results is published by Drs. W. Hughson, A. Ciocco and C. Palmer (Arch. Otolaryngology, 29, 403). Audiometric records were made for air conduction and also for bone conduction. In a large proportion of cases the diagnosis was hereditary deafness and otosclerosis. A high correlation in auditory acuity between the two ears was found, and sex is not a significant factor. Fifty-four per cent of the children were said to be born deaf. Deafness developing later (generally before six years of age) was attributed to many pathological conditions, meningitis causing 17 per cent and together with trauma of the head, measles, otitis media or scarlet fever accounting for nearly half the cases. There was no apparent association between the auditory threshold and the stated cause of deafness, but the close resemblance between the auditory threshold pattern of children grouped together according to cause and age of onset indicates the importance of the biological constitution as a factor in the causation of deafness. The same authors in another paper (Human Biology, 11, No. 2) have made a statistical study of auditory acuity in forty pairs of siblings from the same material. In 70 per cent of cases both siblings were said to have been born deaf, in three cases both were deaf from the same disease, meningitis or whooping cough. The cause of deafness was different in only nine of the forty pairs and the age of onset was different for only nine pairs. Auditory acuity therefore differs significantly less between siblings than between non-siblings.
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Research Items. Nature 144, 160–162 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144160a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144160a0