Introduction & Objective: Meningogenic hearing loss remains the most common cause of acquired postnatal childhood sensorineural hearing loss. Hearing loss occurs in 6-37% after meningitis. The object of this study was evaluation of frequency of post meningitic hearing loss in the patients who hospitalized in the hospitals of Hamadan during 1996-2006. Also we attended to conclude that routine screening of these patients and detection the cases that need to early treatment was advocated.

Materials & Methods: This cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted on 65 children. All of them with diagnosis of bacterial meningitis were hospitalized during 1996-2006. They were tested by P.T.A. and then data were analyzed with spss/10th version.

Results: Prevalence of hearing loss in meningitic patients was 53.8% that did not show meaningful statistical difference in aspect of age & sex. Hearing loss in all of the cases were sensorineural, that 82.8% were bilateral and 17.2% were unilateral. About 76.1% of hearing loss cases were in frequencies of 4000, 6000, 8000 HZ and 74.6% of hearing loss cases had hearing threshold between 20-50 db.

Conclusion: Analysis of our data showed that meningitis lead to bilateral sensorineural hearing loss, often with hearing threshold about 20-50 db and in high frequencies. Routine screening of postmeningitic children for sensorineural hearing loss is advocated