Hearing loss (HL) is a problem that commonly affects people over the world. It may cause profound impact on an individual's emotional, physical, and social well being. There is general agreement that early identification of hearing impairment will positively influence a number of quality of life issue and, in many countries, the universal hearing screening is a national program. Due to importance of HL, evaluation of its etiology will have benefits. All patients that came to ENT clinic of Urmia Imam Hospital in the first five months of 2007 and their chief complaint or a part of their symptoms or signs was hearing loss (n=177 cases) were randomly included in our study. Information sheets were filled out for any subject. Data were analyzed and presented as percentile tables and figures. Among 1140 patients referred to our ENT clinic, 177 cases had HL as a chief complaint or a part of their symptoms or signs. 61.01% of them were male and 38.98% were female. 51.5% of patients had sensorineural hearing loss, 46.7% had conductive hearing loss and 1.8 % had mixed hearing loss. The most common cause of conductive hearing loss was impacted cerumen (19.8%), presbycusis (11.9 %) and noise induced HL (10.7%) were the commonest causes of sensorineural hearing loss. Hearing loss (HL) can lead to social isolation and other problem. It is necessary to reduce these problems with some guidelines. We propose the followings according to the results of our study.
