Newborn hearing screening in our neonatal intensive care unit

Abstract

Early identification of hearing impairment has been shown to improve prognosis; hence screening programs have been advocated. The neonatal hearing screening programs in Gunma Children’s Medical Center involve two-stage hearing screening tests. An automated auditory brainstem response (AABR) test using ALGO3i is first carried out followed by an auditory brainstem response (ABR) test using MEB9204 for further diagnostic evaluation. A retrospective study was conducted to examine the implementation status of newborn hearing screening of 461 infants in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) between January 2014 and December 2015. Among these infants, 411 underwent the AABR test, and 22 infants as referral cases underwent the ABR test. There were 50 infants in whom the ABR test was carried out without performing the AABR test. The sensitivity, specificity, and overall efficiency of the AABR were 89.7%, 86.7%, and 88.6%, respectively. Finally, the overall incidence of hearing impairment detected by our screening tests was 48 (10.4%) out of 461 in NICU. It was confirmed that hearing impairment was highly associated with NICU admission. The AABR referral values were 8.9% and 6.2% in the less than 1,000 g (extremely low birth weight: ELBW) group and the more than 2,500 g group, respectively. Our data showed that ELBW and normal birth weight in NICU admission are risk factors associated with hearing impairment.