Aetiology and risk indicators of hearing impairments in a one-year birth cohort for 1985-86 in northern Finland.

The aetiology and risk indicators of hearing impairments of all types and degrees were studied in a 1-year birth cohort of 8713 children from northern Finland. The subjects (7 years of age) included in the clinical and audiometric examinations were recruited by standard clinical criteria, i.e. suspicion of parents according to a questionnaire, abnormal hearing screening result or a hearing impairment noted in hospital records (n = 541), and by random sampling from among the 8172 not suspected (n = 1009). One-hundred-and-one subjects in the group suspected of having hearing impairment and 27 subjects in the random sample eventually had hearing impairment. The aetiology could be defined in only 44.5% of the cases, ear infections being the most common. In this relatively small series, only a few risk indicators (congenital anomalies, meningitis and a history of ear discharge lasting for over 1 month) could be shown to be associated with impaired hearing in a logistic regression analysis.