Newborn Hearing Screening—Experience at a Tertiary Hospital in Northwest India

Objective: To determine the incidence of hearing impairment in a standardized population of neonates seeking care in a tertiary hospital in Northwest India. Universal hearing screening is implemented in many developed countries. However, neither universal screening, nor high risk screening, exists in India. The incidence of hearing loss in India is found to be 1 to 6 per 1000 newborns screened [1-3]. Screening only the high risk neonates misses 50% of babies with hearing loss [4,5], hence a cost effective universal screening is the viable option to sustain such a program. In our study, the possible burden of hearing disability was evaluated in babies born at a tertiary care hospital in Northwest India. One thousand newborns were screened using Transient Evoked OtoAcoustic Emissions (TEOAE) and 28.6% of them had risk factors. Four out of One Thousand were detected with hearing loss. Brain Stem Evoked Response (BERA) was used to confirm and determine the extent and the type of deafness in the neonates who were screened positive.