Background: The global epidemiological data on congenital hearing loss in children is sparse. We aimed to analyse the trends in the burden of complete hearing loss caused by congenital birth defects in children younger than five years from 1990 to 2030.
Methods: Using data from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study 2019, we reported the counts and rates of prevalence and years lived with disability (YLD) by age, sex, and sociodemographic index (SDI). We also forecasted the prevalence rates until 2030 through the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) and Bayesian age-period-cohort (BAPC) models.
Results: We observed a global prevalence rate of 15.4 (95% uncertainty interval (UI) = 5.8 to 33.8) and a YLD rate of 3.3 (95% UI = 1.1 to 7.1) per 100 000 population in 2019, with both showing downward trends from 1990 to 2019. Regionally, Oceania had the highest prevalence (47.2; 95% UI = 18.8 to 96.6) and YLD (10; 95% UI = 3.2 to 22.8) rates, while Central Europe had the lowest rates. Nationally, the prevalence (85.0; 95% UI = 36.8 to 166.8) and YLD (17.9; 95% UI = 6.6 to 36.9) rates were highest in Myanmar and lowest in Peru. Only the United States of America (2.6%; 95% UI = -4.6 to 14.4) and Norway (0.6%; 95% UI = -6.7 to 16.2) showed upward trends. Compared to girls, the prevalence and YLD rates were higher for boys at global, regional, and five SDI quintile levels, except for Eastern Sub-Saharan Africa. At the global level, downward trends were predicted in prevalence rates from 2019 to 2030 between boys and girls.
Conclusions: Although the global burden of childhood congenital complete hearing loss showed inequalities across locations, sexes, and age groups, we found decreases in the global prevalence rates between 1990 and 2019 and predicted decreases from 2019 to 2030. Better prevention of infectious aetiologies, improving genetic diagnoses, and hearing restoration could alleviate this burden.
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