Effects of maturation on parameters used for pass/fail criteria in neonatal hearing screening programmes using evoked otoacoustic emissions.

Full Abstract

We aimed to investigate the incidence of false alarms that occurred with the pass/fail criteria used in a published series of neonatal hearing screening programmes, as a function of age. We analysed the database of 19137 normally hearing babies (38274 ears) tested in the Wessex Universal Neonatal Hearing Screening Project. Otoacoustic emissions were recorded prior to discharge from maternity units, using IL088 equipment. We assessed the pass/fail rate using the Wessex criteria and 10 other pass/fail criteria published in the literature. Using Pearson's correlation coefficient, a statistically significant correlation between signal-to-noise ratio at each of the frequency bands 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 kHz and babies' age in hours at the 0.01 level was identified. The correlation was also significant (0.01 level) between age and frequency reproducibility in each of the bands at 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 kHz as well as the whole reproducibility. The number of false alarms reduced significantly after the first 24 h of life with all the criteria examined. We conclude that in the first hours after birth due to insufficient maturation of the otoacoustic emission, there is a high rate of false alarms. This increase in the false alarm rate, whilst dependent on the criteria used, occurs with all criteria. This leads to the consideration of whether the establishment of age-dependent pass/fail criteria could reduce the false alarm rate and the subsequent strain on diagnostic centres.Copyright 2007 S. Karger AG, Basel.

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Author information

Author/s: Sadri, Maziar (M); Thornton, A Roger D (AR); Kennedy, Colin R (CR);

Affiliation: MRC Institute of Hearing Research, Southampton University Hospitals Trust, Southampton, UK. mazsadri(-atsign-)yahoo.com

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Validation Studies

Journal: Audiology & neuro-otology (Audiol Neurootol), published in Switzerland. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2007-; vol 12 (issue 4) : pp 226-33

Dates: Created 2007/06/08; Completed 2007/07/03;

PMID: 17389789, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Acoustic Stimulation
Age Distribution
Audiometry, Evoked Response - standards
Databases, Factual
Evoked Potentials, Auditory, Brain Stem
False Positive Reactions

Hearing Disorders - diagnosis; epidemiology
Humans
Infant, Newborn
Neonatal Screening - methods; standards
Otoacoustic Emissions, Spontaneous
Risk Factors

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