Korean Leprosy Bulletin  2005;38(2):95-101

The Study of Status about Hearing Loss in Person Affected Leprosy.

Jong Pill KIM 1 ; Youn Sil KIM ; Young Hoon KO

Affiliations

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Keywords

Leprosy; Hearing loss

Country

Republic of Korea

Language

Korean

Abstract

Leprosy related service of our country is including new patient finding and treatment, preventing the relapse and rehabilitation service. Latest new patient's occurrence is decreasing much than past, and the persons affected leprosy are gradually older. So the necessity of rehabilitation service about them is increased. Influences of hearing ability in human's life is the communication, the recognition of sound, the studying of speech faculty, and the perception ability about several circumstance. NCHS of U.S.A. was reported the hearing loss is one of high incidence disease along with the hypertension and the arthritis in the old persons, and especially the inclination of hearing loss becomes serious as do graying. It was carefully presumed that 20% of old persons more than 65 years old has some difficulties of hearing ability in Korea. The 52 persons affected leprosy(PALs) were examined the pure tone audiometry for the evaluating of the hearing loss. Among them, we have found the 12 persons(23.1%) with the hearing loss, by the results of pure tone audiometry(more than 40 dB).