Maintaining acceptably low referral rates in teoae-based newborn hearing screening programs

Newborn hearing screening outcomes during the first decade of the program in a reference hospital from Turkey

“…It has been clearly declared that the presence of fluid in the external ear canal and the middle ear during the first 24-48 h after birth was the main reason of the fails in the first test before discharge [31,32]. The previous papers presented different fail rates in the first a-TEOAE-test before discharge.…”

Making universal newborn hearing screening a success

“…Its main advantages were a positive attitude of the administration of the hospital, a very high birth rate and the fact that in Greece, in contrast to most other countries, newborns typically reside for 4-5 days in the maternity ward, and thus hearing testing may be performed late, and more than once. However, as in most UNHS programs worldwide [7,8], various problems emerged during the implementation of the program.…”

“…In this way we may have had an extra burden of work, but we avoided the need for referral in a substantial number of cases, and we believe that this was a time-effective approach. We strongly believe that testing repetition is the answer to the problem of high referral rates, because even a minimal displacement of the probe, or even change of the status of the newborn, may have a crucial effect on the results of the test [7]. In cases where the screening results remained abnormal the newborns were referred for retesting with TEOAEs, 3-4 weeks later.…”

Comparison of currently available devices designed for newborn hearing screening using automated auditory brainstem and/or otoacoustic emission measurements

“…Barker et al [5] and Gabbard et al [8] reported pass rates of 57-89% for OAE measurements compared to pass rates of 97-100% for AABR recordings. However, measurements in both studies were performed on newborns aged less than 24 h. It is well known that the pass rate for OAE screening measurements increases with newborn age up to approximately 30 h after birth (e.g., [17,18]). Comparative studies on newborns over 24 h of age often indicate better performance for OAE measurements.…”