Volume : 8, Issue : 4, April - 2019

Neonatal Hearing Screening : Efficacy of the OAEs versus Automated ABR

Hari Kumar, Rony Chakravarty, Atul Seth

Abstract :

Hearing loss is one of the commonest detectable congenital disorders. Aims and objectives: Screening of all the neonates born for congenital hearing loss and compare efficacy of otoacoustic emissions (OAEs) and automated Auditory Brainstem Response (aABR) for hearing screening. Material &Methods: 429 babies were studied out of which 2 babies did not pass the screening tests and hearing loss was confirmed on diagnostic Brainstem Evoked Response Audiometry (BERA).Conclusions: It was concluded that 4 per thousand babies had congenital hearing loss out of which only 50% were high risk babies, which adequately emphasizes the requirement for universal neonatal screening as compared to screening only high risk babies. Another inference gathered was that automated ABR was a better modality as compared to screening OAE because one baby who passed the screening OAE did not pass aABR, hence it was infered that if either of the two modalities were to used for screening then aABR should be preferably used.