Investigation of infants under one-year-old who underwent audiometric examinations

Abstract

We investigated 222 infants who visited the National Mie Hospital for hearing examinations between 2000 and 2008. In 49 (22.1%) cases suspected to have hearing impairment by general health examinations or their parents, six had moderate or severe hearing impairment and two had unilateral hearing loss. The median age at the first visit was four months old. Ninety-five (42.8%) cases were referred to us for advanced hearing examinations after undergoing newborn hearing screening (NHS). The median age at the first visit was one month old. Advanced examinations revealed that 17 had severe, 14 had moderate, 3 had mild and 35 had unilateral hearing loss. In five cases, repeated examination showed improvement of the impaired hearing level to the normal range. The screened children with severe and moderate hearing loss, the average age at the start of use of the hearing aids was 6.8 and 14.8 months, respectively.
Although NHS is effective for early detection of mild-to-severe and unilateral hearing loss, sometimes appropriate fitting of hearing aids is difficult, especially in infants with mild-to-moderate hearing loss . It is necessary to design a universal system for NHS and undertake early intervention in children with mild-to-severe hearing loss.