Identification of Neonatal Hearing Impairment: Infants with Hearing Loss

Abstract

Most of the hearing losses found in this study were mild and, based on clinical history and tympanometry tests, many of the mild and some of the moderate impairments may have been acquired in early infancy due to middle ear effusion. In the group of infants used for determination of neonatal test performance there were approximately equal numbers of mild, moderate, severe and profound losses. Only a small percentage of infants with a conventional risk indicator for hearing loss actually had a hearing loss, and there were a significant number of infants with hearing loss who did not have a risk indicator. These findings support the need for an early identification program based on universal neonatal hearing screening rather than by targeted testing of those with risk indicators.