Universal newborn hearing screening

In Germany about 1-3 children in 1,000 are born with a bilateral hearing loss of > 40 dB. If this damage is not discovered and therefore not treated early it mostly leads to impairment in language development. Further consequences are disruption of emotional, cognitive, intellectual and psychosocial development of the child making later access to education and professional development difficult. The average age of diagnosis of early childhood hearing loss is about 2-3 years and leads to a much too delayed initiation of therapy. After revision of the pediatric guidelines in Germany newborns will have a right to a newborn hearing screening as from January 2009. For this examination two methods are basically available: the measurement of otoacoustic emissions (OAE) and auditory brainstem response (ABR). For both methods screening devices are available. Automated measurement and analysis of the results are possible.