Neonatal Hearing Screening using Transient Evoked Otoacoustic Emissions in Gulab Devi Teaching Hospital

Neonatal hearing screening

Abstract

Objective:

The aim of the study is to find out the frequency of hearing loss by Universal Neonatal hearing screening program.

Methodology:

An analytical cross–sectional study was performed on the sample size of 712 neonates. Non-probability sampling technique were used in this study. Data was collected from newborn nursery of Pediatric Department of Gulab Devi Teaching Hospital from February 2023 to December 2023. All healthy neonates discharged from Hospital were included in this study. Neonates with any medical conditions were excluded. The SPSS version 23.0 package was used for statistical analysis. Frequencies and percentage were used to report qualitative variables such as age, gender and results of hearing screening.

Results:

Total Sample size of was 712, out of which 381 (53.5%) were male and 331 (46.5%) were female. Both ears of 501(70.4%) neonates were pass and 211(29.6%) were referred. Out of referred ears 182 (25.6%) were due to noise. The ears of 590(82.9%) subjects were tested after 24 hours and ears of 122 (17.1%) were tested within 24 hours. Only 34(4.8%) patients visited after 4 weeks for follow-up, out of which 24(3.3%) passed hearing screening and 10(1.4%) were referred

Conclusion:                  

Our study shows High “pass” percentage and low ‘referral’ percentage for universal newborn hearing screening as well as in follow-up cases. A large number of neonates were “referred” due to noisy test environment and on whom tests were performed before 24 hours of age as there could be possibility of physiological changes and debris in the ear canal etc.

Keywords:

Hearing impairment, TEOAE’s, Neonatal screening.