The assessment of hearing organ of school children in Upper Silesia region.

Because at present no estimated data is available concerning the frequency of hearing loss in the population of primary school children in Silesia, it has been assumed useful to carry out a research programme. An important advantage of this study is the assessment of hearing in children from Upper Silesian region, a top ranking region in Europe in industrialisation and environmental pollution. In the selected population of primary school children in the province of Silesia, hearing loss occurred in 6% of the examined pupils; in schools located in urban areas it was higher than in schools from rural areas. In the group of children aged 6-10 years conductive hearing loss occurred significantly more frequently, than main cause of that hearing loss was Eustachian tube dysfunction. The obtained results testify about the society being hardly aware of the problems related to hearing loss, which stresses the necessity of conducting screening examinations of hearing organ in children at school age, as well as improving the health care and prevention in that respect.