Diagnostic testing following referral from newborn hearing screening at the Japanese Red Cross Society Wakayama Medical Center

We analyzed the results of newborn hearing screening and diagnostic testing following referral conducted at the Japanese Red Cross Society Wakayama Medical Center for about 7 years. In this Hospital, we conducted the hearing screening on 1653 newborn babies and 54 (3.2%) were judged to require closer examination. Fifty-one infants and 41 infants who failed the newborn hearing screening conducted at 8 obstetric clinics in Wakayama Prefecture (92 cases in total) visited the center for more detailed examination. Sixty-two of the 92 cases (67%) were confirmed to have normal hearing on re-examination by automated instruments and 11 cases (12%) were confirmed to have normal hearing by conventional ABR, while hearing loss was confirmed in the remaining 19 cases (21%) for which early intervention was possible. Among the 41 patients referred to us by obstetric clinics, as many as 17 cases (41%) were diagnosed to have hearing loss. This high percentage probably reflects the fact that the patients had undergone prior testing, such as the one-month-old health checkup, several times before coming to our hospital. There were few cases who were diagnosed to have hearing loss based on conventional ABR conducted 3 to 4 months after birth, but none of the cases diagnosed to have hearing loss were later found to have normal hearing. This indicates that conventionalABR is an effective and reliable method of hearing examination.