BERA: A Tool to Study the Impact of Consanguinity on Hearing in Children

Marriage is said to be consanguineous, when it is between persons descending from the common ancestor. Consanguineous marriages are widely contracted worldwide despite the devastating effects in children born to such couples. The aim of the study was to analyze the impact of consanguinity on hearing in babies born out of consanguineous marriages. It was a comparative study in 50 children aged between 1 month -5 years born out of consanguineous marriages and 50 children without parental history of consanguinity who attended pediatric OPD. BERA (Brain stem Evoked Response Audiometry) testing was done with RMS EMG EP MARK-II machine manufactured by the RMS recorders and medicare system, Chandigarh. Students’ unpaired t test was used for statistical analysis. Out of 50 cases of positive history of parental consanguinity, 39 had hearing impairment. No BERA waves were recordable in 17 of 39 children. Remaining 22 had mean wave V threshold 52.36 ± 21.41 dB, which was highly significant statistically when compared to the threshold of 32± 0.1 dB in those without any history of consanguinity. In conclusion, awareness needs to be created in the population to discourage consanguineous marriages. Screening programme should be performed in the nursery and well-baby clinic during immunization in the early neonatal stage to avoid harmful effect on speech and language development.