Objective: The purpose of study was identify hearing loss in thalassemic patients with history of Desferrioxamine (DFO) therapy. This study was carried out in a cross-sectional descriptive survey on 195 thalassemic patients (3-30 years old) in Gazvin Thalassemia center and Tehran pediatrics&apos medical center.
Methods: The patients underwent routine otolaryngologic history and physical examination, along with standard pure-tone audiometry.
Results: Hearing loss was present in 43.1% of patients. 16% of patients had conductive hearing loss and 4.6% of patient had sensory neural hearing loss. 22.5% of thalassemic patients had high-frequency sensory neural hearing loss and more importantly, high-frequency hearing loss attributable to Desferrioxamine ototoxicity was present in 12% of patients. Furthermore, these evaluations showed that there is a significant relationship between hearing loss and DFO usage and hearing loss too. There is no significant relationship between hearing loss and ferritin level between hearing loss and age of DFO usage too.
Conclusion: Management of these patients requires proper dosing of Desferrioxamine, along with regular otolaryngolgic and audiometric follow-up in order to prevent the effect of ototoxicity of desferal.

Background and Aim: Regions in the cochlea with no (or very few) functioning inner hair cells and/or neurons are called dead regions. The aim of this study was to identify the cochlear dead regions in moderate to profound sensory neural hearing impaired children through the Threshold equalizing noise (TEN_HL) test.
Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, the TEN(HL) was performed for the all frequencies available on test CD, on 30 children with ages ranging from five to forteen years (mean age, 8.5 ±2.8 years old).
Results: In this study, 58.3% of ears were found to have a dead region for at least one frequency. Classifying by test frequencies, 20% were found to have a dead region, 24% to be inconclusive and 56% to have no dead regions. The difference between mean SNR(T) in ears with and without dead regions was statistically significant. The difference between mean absolute thresholds in two groups was statistically significant at 1000 Hz and below (p <0.05).
Conclusion: The results indicated a relatively high prevalence of dead regions in children with sensory neural hearing impairment, especially for frequencies at which the hearing loss exceeds 70 dB HL.

Background and Aim: Hearing aid users complain about a phenomenon called "occlusion effect". The aim of this study was to compare the occlusion effect in normal hearing individuals and those with slight and mild sensory neural hearing loss via Real Ear Measurement.
Methods: Sixty volunteers (30 male, 30 female) aged 18-55 years were enrolled in this study. Subjects were instructed to vocalize /e/ and /i/ for 5 seconds. Sound pressure level was measured by a probe- microphone and recorded in the ear canal. Occlusion effect and the frequency in which maximum occlusion effect occurs were obtained for each individuals for further analysis.
Results: The peak of occlusion effect for /e/ was 10.25 dB and 9.77 dB respectively in 751.9 Hz and 542.98 Hz frequencies in female and male individuals. The maximum occlusion effect occurred with 19.03 dB and 19.10 dB for /i/ and in 518.88 Hz and 440.28 Hz in female and male individuals, in respect. In addition, no significant difference was seen among hearing levels and between genders.
Conclusion: The peak of occlusion effect varies significantly among hearing aid users so that the hearing aid must be tuned. Probe-microphone measures will assist in determination where frequency- specific adjustments are needed.