Antenatal factors modulate hearing screen failure risk in preterm infants

Abstract

Intrauterine infection with a fetal inflammatory response is a risk factor for neonatal hearing loss while maternal therapies significantly reduced the risk of neonatal hearing loss in very low birthweight infants.

Maternal and Placental Factors Associated with Congenital Hearing Loss in Very Preterm Neonates

“…In addition, funisitis also tended to be associated with increased incidence of SNHL in univariate analysis, although this trend did not reach the level of statistical significance. These findings are in line with the results of a previous report 15 and are to be expected given the strong association between severity of fetal vasculitis and multiple neurodevelopmental impairments (including hearing loss), which can be anticipated to cause significant SNHL, in extremely preterm infants. 27 Similarly, with regards to markers of systemic inflammation in the fetus other than funisitis, Leung et al 15 reported that elevated interleukin-6 (IL-6) level in cord blood, but not IL-1b and tumor necrosis factor level, was significantly associated with an increased risk of hearing screen failure.…”

“…In this regard, our findings confirm the lack of association between histologic chorioamnionitis and either "refer" on the NHS test or SNHL shown in other studies. 12,15 We also found no association between clinical chorioamnionitis and abnormal hearing test results. These findings are consistent with the results of Pappas et al, 16 who demonstrated that infants exposed to histological and clinical chorioamnionitis were not at a Data are presented as mean AE standard deviation or n (%).…”

“…In particular, several reports provided somewhat contradictory results with regard to the role of histological chorioamnionitis in the development of SNHL. 12,14,15 In recent years, the technology and protocols of the newborn hearing screening (NHS) test have been significantly improved, which has made the NHS test the main modality for early detection of SNHL. Accordingly, this study aimed to identify maternal and placental risk factors associated with abnormal NHS results and subsequently confirmed SNHL in very preterm neonates.…”

Risk factors for failure in the newborn hearing screen test in very preterm twins

“…The initial sample size calculation was based on the previous study reporting the incidence of failure in the NHS test for preterm singletons to be 16%, 22 with an alpha of 0.05 and a power of 0.8. Assuming a ratio of 2:1 of preterm singletons to twins, we retrospectively calculated that a total sample size of 477 would be needed to detect an 11% difference in the incidence of "refer" results on the NHS test between preterm twins and singletons.…”

A prospective study on the effects and prevalence of maternal, fetal and placental risk factors on low birth weight neonates

“…1 This is attributed to special problem among neonates, especially congenital anomalies, respiratory tract infections, acute diarrhoeal diseases and skin infections. 2 The increased rate of infections is due to immature immune system and poor functions of integumentary system when compared to those functions in the adults. However, these functions are even more impaired especially in the preterm infants.…”