Hearing loss and eye refractive disorders in patients admitted to Vali-e- Asr Hospital in Birjand, Iran, 2015

Introduction: There is insufficient information about the correlation between hearing and visual impairments. Its importance arises when trainers should care about medical issues of their clients. Refractive errors of the eye are one of the main causes of visual loss in the society. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between refractive errors in the eye (by the type of refractive error) and hearing loss in patients referred to Vali-e-Asr Hospital in Birjand, Iran. Methods: In this case-control study was conducted on 124 patients referring to Ear, Nose, and Throat Clinic with hearing loss (case) and 117 patients with normal hearing status (control). The participants were selected non-randomly and they were matched in terms of age and gender. All data were analyzed by SPSS (version 21) using the Chi-square test and t-test. P-value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: A total number of 241 patients (case=124, control=117) participated in this study. There were 51.6% and 54.7% of women in the case and control groups, respectively. The mean ages in the case and control groups were 36.03±17.13 and 35.95±18.22 years, respectively. The frequencies of refractive disorders were similar in both groups (i.e., 36.3% in case vs. 38.5% in control). The frequencies of myopia in the case and control groups were 85% versus 72.5% for the right eye and 88.4% versus 75.6% for the left eye. There was the higher prevalence of myopia in the case group; however, the relationship was not significant. The results showed that the difference in the prevalence of refractive errors in the hearing loss of patients was not statistically significant, compared to patients with normal hearing. Conclusions: There was no significant difference between the hearing loss and refractive disorders. Individuals with hearing loss showed higher prevalence of myopia; however, the relationship was not statistically significant.