Hearing Loss Related Quality of Life in Adolescents with Hearing Loss

Objectives: Quality of life, when referring to an individual’s health, is called health-related quality of life. The purpose of this study is to assess self-perceived hearing loss related quality of life of adolescents with hearing loss and its relationship with sex, age sub-groups or school settings with domains of quality of life. Methods: A school based survey was conducted in Tehran city. Using stratified sampling, 255 7th to 12th grade students with hearing loss, aged 11-19 years, studying in main streaming and special school sitting, were participated in the study by completing the health-related quality of life adolescent’s questionnaire. Physical, Emotional and Social health-related quality of life domain scores as well as Total health-related quality of life scores was calculated in a 0-100 scoring system. Results: As a whole, health-related quality of life of adolescents calculated to be 64.7±16.5. Students with milder hearing loss reported their quality of life (physical, emotional and social domains, as well as total quality of life) better than those with more severe hearing loss. Girls reported their physical and total health-related quality of life better than boys, and adolescents who were studied in mainstreaming reported better physical, social and total health-related quality of life. No significant differences were seen between reported health-related quality of life in early, mid or late adolescent age sub-groups. Nevertheless the power of tests was not enough to exclude differences between groups. Discussion: Findings of this study could be readily used to focus interventions on domains with more weakness in each group of adolescents. Beyond that the results could be helpful as a base line for detecting effectiveness of interventions in future.