Background and Aim: Research conducted since the early 1900s has consistently identified differences between deaf and hearing children on performance of a wide variety of motor tasks, most notably balance. Our study was performed to test static and dynamic balance skills in congenital severe to profound hearing impaired children in comparison with normal age-matched children.
Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 30 severe to profound hearing impaired and 40 normal children with age 6 to 10 years old. Bruininks-Oseretsky test of motor proficiency 2, balance subset with 9 parts was used for evaluation of balance skills.
Results: Hearing-impaired children showed 16.7 to 100% fail results in 7 parts of the balance subset. In normal children fail result was revealed just in 3 parts of the balance subset from 2.5 to 57.5%, and differences between two groups were significant (p<0.0001). There was a significant difference between two groups in two static balance skills of standing on one leg on a line and standing on one leg on a balance beam with eyes closed (p<0.0001).
Conclusion: It seems that development of static balance skills are longer than dynamic ones. Because severe to profound hearing-impaired children showed more weakness than normal children in both static and dynamic balance abilities, functional tests of balance proficiency can help to identify balance disorders in these children.

Background and Aim: Vestibular evoked myogenic potentials and acoustically evoked short latency negative response are two non-cochlear responses with probably saccular origin. The present study was conducted to determine the percentage of presence and the relation between these two responses in children with hearing loss.
Methods: Thirty children with profound congenital sensorineural hearing loss were studied.  Vestibular evoked myogenic potentials ellicitedby tone burst stimuli and acoustically evoked short latency negative response ellicited by click stimuli were recorded. Both responses were recorded at air conduction threshold level monaurally via an internal receiver.
Results: Vestibular evoked myogenic potentials in 53.3% of children and acoustically evoked short latency negative response in 40.0% of cases were recorded. There was a significant correlation between the percentage of recording these two responses (p=0.005). Gender and the stimulated ear had no effect on the results.
Conclusion: In almost half of these disabled children, both vestibular evoked myogenic potentials and acoustically evoked short latency negative response were recoreded. This finding may both indicate that hearing loss has no effect on the function of otolith organs in some children and vestibular deficits probably exist along with hearing impairment in others. This findng reiterates the importance of evaluation of vestibular system as part of standard auditory evaluations.