The hearing screening of newborns depends on the development and financial support of health care system of each country. Therefore it is often preferable to performed a targeted screening on newborns at risk for hearing impairment, although the universal screening would be preferable. In this short report, we present the initial results from screening newborns at risk at the University Clinical Center in Ljubljana.

       Newborns from the Neonatal Intensive Care and those with a family history for hearing impairment were tested at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Transient Otoacoustic Emissions (TEOAEs) were measured with the Echo-Screen Plus( from Madsen). If a TEOAE response was absent, the test was repeated before discharging the newborn from the hospital. Those with absent TEOAEs on both ears were referred to the Audiologic Department of the ENT Clinic. During 2002, 1300 newborns at risk underwent hearing screening.and 38 of them were referred to the Audiologic Department. After taking the history of the disease, we perfomed the ENT examination, tympanometry, free field audiometry, and TEOAE and Auditory Brainstem Response measurements. TEOAEs were present in 27 and absent in 11 of the 38 newborns. 4 of 11 newborns with absent TEOAE had conductive hearing impairment and were treated by conservative or operative treatment. In all 4 newborns TEOAEs were present after the treatment. 7 newborns had sensorineural hearing impairment, which is 18.4 % of the newborns referred from Department of Obstetrics and 2.92 % of the total number of tested newborns. Our results confirm the higher rate of hearing imapirment in newborns at risk. We can also confirm the need of having staff with a high level of trainin in order to perform properly the OAE measurements.

Date of report: November 17, 2003
e-mail : Branka Alcin