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Clinical and experimental studies have proved in the recent decade that Immune- mediated Diseases hurt inner ear. Autoimmunity dysfunction of the inner ear can be caused by systematic or local diseases. The Autoimmune pathogenesis and suspected Antigens causing Autoimmunity dysfunction are yet to be detected.

Clinical procedures and laboratory experiments may follow a fixed pattern or be completely different. Experimental treatment of autoimmune diseases has lit the hopes, although more experiments are still needed

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Background: hearing loss is a major health care problem that tends to retard the developmental milestones of children. It takes early detection and intervention to avoid a permanent loss in acquisition of speech and cognitive functions. Hence, the importance of hearing screening in all children especially in the developing world for accurate statistics and early intervention is clear. This work was aimed at predicting hearing in children by means of acoustic reflex measurements
Method: In this study which was performed in 1995, 146 ears(86 children aged between 5-10years old referring to audio logy clinic in Tehran university of medical sciences between august 1995 and February 1996) were evaluated (amongst 95 were normal and 51 ears with SNHL<84dB).the methods Niemeyer and Destrehan formula ,Lilly2 equation, un weighed Sensitivity prediction by acoustic reflex, weighed sensitivity prediction by acoustic reflex to establish their clinical viability.
Results: findings demonstrated that weighed sensitivity prediction by acoustic reflex(WASPAR) have a good correlation with conventional audiometric evaluation(K=.78) and also it has good sensitivity, Specificity , Negative predicted value(NPA) and positive predicted value (PPV).
Conclusion: In case that conventional audiometry is not applicable, WASPAR is a good objective choice in lieu of subjective tests.

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Background and Aim: Evaluation of hearing-impaired children&aposs auditory skills by a valid test is very important before starting auditory training. There are many different tests available for languages other than Persian, and some limited Persian tests for children above 5 year of age as well. Accordingly considering the importance of early intervention, we aimed to design a test for evaluating auditory skills of 3-4 year-old hearing-impaired Persian (Farsi) children, which is not available to date.
Methods: The study method was test (scale) construction. The test named Tavana includes four subtests: detection, discrimination, identification and sentence comprehension. For determining content validity of the test, the vocabulary of 3-4 year-old normal-hearing and hearing-impaired children and also the comments of seven specialists were applied. We classified 10,10,8 and 6 sub skills for 1^st to 4^th subtests, respectively.
Results: The content validity of Tavana test&aposs subskills were 100%, 83%, 96% and 95%, respectively (mean=94%). Mean time for test performance was 82 minutes.
Conclusion: Content validity of Tavana test was 94% which was statistically valid compared to Modarres test (97%) and Mazaheryazdi test (88%).

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Background and Aim: Hearing-impaired children make a lot of stress for the parents. Providing the parents of these children with suitable consultation and rehabilitation services results in increased satisfaction and reduced anxiety level. In this study we investigated the relationship between audiology service satisfaction and level of anxiety in parents of hearing-impaired children.
Methods: Seventy-five parents of hearing-impaired children, whose problem was diagnosed during the last year, participated in the study. The mothers were interviewed using satisfaction and anxiety questionnaires.
Results: There was no association between level of service satisfaction and parental state and trait anxiety level however, the group with a higher level of satisfaction (score 64-90) recorded a lower anxiety score (0-20). There was also a significant association between parental state and trait anxiety level (p<0.001). Considering the demographic data, only the living place (Tehran compared with other provinces) showed a significant association with satisfaction and anxiety levels people living in small provinces had a significantly less satisfaction level (p=0.002) and a more anxiety score (p=0.017).
Conclusion: Lack of durability of services was the concern of people living in small provinces which resulted in being more anxious and less satisfied.

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Background and Aim: Pragmatics refers to speech interactions and the social aspect of communication in language contexts. Due to the crucial role of hearing in language skill development, hearing-impaired children have problems with all aspects of language, including pragmatics. These skills are crucial in children's daily life. There is a lack of Persian studies on hearing-impaired children. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to describe some pragmatic skills of hearing and hearing-impaired children.
Methods: This descriptive case study was conducted on five hearing-impaired and two normal-hearing 6 year old children. Their pragmatic language skills were studied by the Persian story retelling test. in a quiet room. The children's re-told story was recorded, analyzed, and scored.
Results: There was no difference between the scores of hearing and severe hearing-impaired children. However, children with severe hearing loss and cochlear implant, and hearing children were different in maintaining the subject and sequence of events. Children with profound hearing loss and hearing aid, and hearing children had a significant difference in all aspects except main information. All subjects used conjunctions correctly.
Conclusion: The pragmatic skills of hearing-impaired children are weaker than hearing children. There are also differences between hearing-impaired children's abilities. This difference in pragmatic skills shows the difference in amount of hearing loss, kind of assistive device, effective use of remaining hearing, onset and quality of aural rehabilitation program, and other factors. Therefore, a research with a greater sample size is necessary to explain these differences.

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Background and Aim: As word recognition score test is one of the most important tests in audiologic test battery and there is no study on reliability and validity of existing monosyllabic word lists, we decided to investigate this in people with noise induced hearing loss.

Methods: In this non-randomized descriptive-analytic study, 30 adults with noise induced high frequency hearing loss with the age of 18 to 46 years were evaluated. Construct validity was evaluated by comparing Mosleh lists with list NU-6 and reliability was achieved by test-retest (-two-week interval).

Results: The mean (SD) score of word recognition was 94.01 (3.95) percent for list 2, 90.40 (4.90) percent for list 4, 89.08 (4.43) percent for list 5, and 94.10 (4.11) percent for list 9. A reliability of 94% was achieved in all four lists . Regression analysis revealed that word recognition score (WRS) had decreased in proportion to pure tone average.

Conclusion: Four lists have good construct validity. All word lists are phonetically reliable too.

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Background and Aim: Navigation information is processed and stored in different brain areas such as hippocampus. Since multiple pathways has been reported between vestibular nuclei and hippocampus and also cognitive dysfunction specifically in spatial memory is induced by vestibular deficits, it can be assumed that vestibular system stimulation ameliorates spatial memory. The aim of study was to evaluate the effect of galvanic vestibular stimulation on normal individual’s spatial memory.

Methods: In this experimental-interventional study, sixty 18-30-years-old women were randomly allocated in intervention and control groups. Intervention group undergone subthreshold bilateral bipolar galvanic vestibular stimulation and control group received sham stimulation. Stimulation was presented for 15 minutes. Corsi Block Tapping (CBT) test scores were compared before and after subthreshold bipolar galvanic vestibular stimulation exposure or no stimulation in each group and between groups.

Results: All test parameters were the same in both groups before stimulation (p<0.050). There were significant improvement in block span, total score and learning score in intervention group after galvanic vestibular stimulation (p<0.050), no significant difference in delayed score (p=0.600). Learning score was improved (p=0.003) and delayed score was deteriorated (p=0.010) in control group. Percentages of block span and total score in intervention group were significantly different compared to the other group (p<0.050).

Conclusion: Galvanic vestibular stimulation improves short-term and long-term spatial memory. This test may inherently have learning effect that is not influenced by stimulation.

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Background and Aim: Non-linear frequency compression is a new feature in hearing instruments compresses the voices of a high-frequency region above a certain cut-off point and transfers them to the lower frequency regions in order to improve the audibility. In this study, we aimed to survey the effect of this feature on the total level of hearing skills of children with profound hearing loss at the age of 3-4 years.

Methods: Twenty two 3-4-years-old children with profound hearing loss were selected with improbable simple sampling. 11 of them had hearing instruments with non-linear frequency compression and 11 had traditional hearing instruments. Tavana test (Jarollahi, 2009) was used to compare the level of hearing skills in these two groups.

Results: Comparison of mean scores of total level of hearing skills in two groups indicated a significant difference (p <0.001). Also, the mean scores of level in all subtests, detection (p=0.022), determination (p=0.005), recognition (p=0.039) and comprehension (p=0.010), showed significant differences.

Conclusion: Using the hearing instruments with non-linear frequency compression would increase the total level of hearing skills in children with profound hearing loss at the ages of 3-4-years and also, in all skill of detection, determination, recognition and comprehension.