Hearing impairment in children with congenital cytomegalovirus infection

Abstract

Intrauterine infections are represented by a large group of diseases evoked by viruses, bacteria and protozoa. Perinatal contamination can affect maturation, provoke prematurity, intrauterine death or acute form of infection in the early neonatal period. However, some congenital infections such as cytomegalovirus asymptomatic have no symptoms in the early neonatal period, but it doesn’t exclude occurrence of late–onset sequelae. Congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection is one of the principle causes of non­genetic prelingual sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) development. As reported, CMV is registered worldwide in 0.64–0.70% of newborns. The rate of CMV-induced SNHL varies from 15 to 21%. CMV infection can provoke either congenital SNHL or late­onset hearing loss. Due to the lack of neonatal CMV screening in Russia congenital asymptomatic CMV infection remains undiagnosed in many cases. Furthermore, even in the case of timely diagnostics of congenital CMV infection, there is no approved algorithm for subsequent monitoring of such patients. In the course of follow­up, the possibility of development of central hearing impairment should also be considered. In this article we present our algorithm of assessment of central and peripheral hearing functions in children from birth till 6 years old.