Newborn hearing screening at Rajavithi Hospital, Thailand: hearing loss in infants not admitting in intensive care unit.

BACKGROUND: Approximately one to two per 1000 newborns have hearing loss. Delay in detection of this disability leads to impaired development and may prevent the acquisition of speech. Early screening of hearing in newborns results in children receiving early language rehabilitation.

OBJECTIVE: Determine the incidence of infants hearing loss in infants not requiring intensive care.

MATERIAL AND METHOD: A prospective descriptive study in hearing loss in infants not requiring intensive care in Rajavithi Hospital between 17th January 2008 to 23rd December 2009. Infants were screened with otoacoustic emissions (OAE), the results were divided into two groups, "pass" and "refer". The infants who failed the screening test were referred for further checks with second OAE and if they failed again, then the authors reassessed them with Auditory Steady State Response Test (ASSR).

RESULTS: There were 508 newborns that needed intensive care out of 5,190 live births. 639 excluded because of unwilling to join the project. Therefore 4,043 newborns were included in the study. There were 246 (6.1%) newborns who failed the first screening test but only 189 newborns were tested in second OAE because 57 newborns were lost to follow-up. Twenty one newborns (11.1%) failed the second test. There were 15 newborn using ASSR for hearing threshold (6 newborns were lost to follow-up). There were 11 newborn was normal hearing, 2 newborn (rate 49.5: 100,000) was mild hearing and moderate to severe hearing.

CONCLUSION: The incidence of moderate to severe hearing loss in newborns who did not require intensive care was very low (rate 49.5: 100,000). However screening all newborns with OAE is still valuable because of severe impact to quality of life of late detection of hearing loss. Evaluation of hearing by ASSR was reliable.