Prevalence of severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss in children having family members with hearing impairment.

The purpose of this paper is to study the prevalence rate of hearing impairment among children with siblings and family members having hearing and speech disorders. A random survey of 6,421 Saudi infants and children between 2 months and 12 years of age was conducted in the Riyadh area. Children with no or few siblings and those who were firstborn were at relatively higher risk, and there was a strong association between children in the hearing-impaired group among those having living siblings with deafness. Those children who had family members with hearing and speech problems were at twice the risk of their counterpart groups regarding hearing impairment.