[Results from ten years newborn hearing screening in a secondary hospital]

Introduction: A critical analysis is performed on the results of a newborn hearing screening program in a regional hospital.

Patients: Screening results from 14,247 newborns in our maternity ward from 2002 to 2013.

Methods: Two step recordings of bilateral otoacoustic emissions (initial and repeat, if failed, at about one month of life). Assessment by clinical brainstem responses.

Results: The first step was performed on 14,015 newborns (98.3% of the total) reaching the screening objective. The first step pass figures were 93.7%, which implies a good pass rate with a few patients to repeat. The second step is also good because it has a pass rate of 88.9% of newborns examined (only 0.63% of initial group needed brainstem responses assessment), but 10.6% were lost to follow up, and that is a major problem. In newborns, scheduled for brainstem responses, the loss to follow-up is worse, with a figure of 29.5%, despite the high accuracy of this test given that 69.4% of those assessed showed hearing loss. This figure represents a 0.31% of the initial group, and is a similar to that published for congenital hearing loss. Including patients that were lost to follow up this figure could be greater.

Conclusion: Newborn hearing screening is useful but needs stronger control to avoid the follow up loss. In order to achieve this, it is crucial to have a good database and a screening coordinator.