Background: Down syndrome (DS) is one of the commonest causes of developmental delay in children, with equilibrium problems being an integral part of the syndrome. This leads to further impairment of cognitive and concentration abilities.
Material and methods:In our study, 30 DS children were categorized into 3 groups: bilateral normal middle ear pressure, bilateral abnormal middle ear pressure, and unilateral abnormal middle ear pressure. Sensory components of balance (somatosensory, visual, and vestibular) were assessed using computerized dynamic posturography.Results: Results showed a statistically significant decrease in composite score, visual ratio, and vestibular ratio among DS children compared to normal children. No significant differences in sensory parameters between the various DS groups (with various tympanogram types) were encountered.Conclusions: This might lead one to suspect central and proprioceptive causes behind balance problems in DS, but further extended studies are needed to confirm this. Bedside screening tests for visual and vestibular functioning of balance are recommended, e.g. past pointing and Fukuda for early detection and intervention.
Introduction: Young children who experience severe-to-profound sensory-neural hearing loss (SNHL) face challenges in developing spoken language since they are unable to detect acoustic-phonetic cues which are essential for speech recognition. Aim: The aim of this study was to examine the influence of age at implantation on children's language development to detect whether early intervention with cochlear implantation in children with severe to profound SNHL results in better linguistic outcomes. Subjects and Methods: 60 children from the cochlear implant unit from the Kasr El Ainy hospital were recruited to participate in this cross sectional study. They suffered from congenital bilateral severe to profound sensori-neural hearing loss since birth. They all had unilateral cochlear implant. Their ages ranged from 2-7 years old, 30 of them received cochlear implant prior to 5 years of age and the other 30 children received cochlear implant after 5 years of age. They all underwent formal language assessments. Results: Comparison between group I & group II in receptive, expressive and total language ages obtained by the Arabic Language Test with & without visual cues showed a significant difference between group I (early) and group II(late).
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