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[Hearing screening with automatic evaluation of TEOAE and a new method of automatic evaluation of early auditory
R Schönweiler1, E Tioutou, R Tolloczko
1Abteilung für Phoniatrie und Pädaudiologie, Klinik für Hals-, Nasen- und Ohrenkrankheiten, Universitätsklinikum Lübeck, Ratzeburger Allee 160, 23562 Lübeck. rainer.schoenweiler@phoniatrie.mu-luebeck.de
Background And Objective:
To make a rational decision as to which screening test might be adequate as a universal newborn hearing screening, different methods have to be tested under "real-life" conditions. In addition, a good reference is required as "golden standard."
Patients/Methods:
In the study presented here, an ABR with a novel algorithm for threshold-estimation was optimized and compared to TEOAE (Echoscreen) and DPOAE (GSI 60) in a three-step protocol using a standard click-evoked ABR (Evoselect) as reference of sensitivity and specificity.
Results:
26 ears were found to be hearing-impaired. All of them were also detected by each of the screening method (sensitivity 100%). Specificity in the final "step 2" of the study was around 87.7/92.3% for Echoscreen, 82.4/84.4% for DPOAE and 82.4/89.1 for Evoflash (left/right, respectively). Differences were not at all significant (X2-test, p > > 0.05). In summary, results were somewhat inferior to those found by other authors, probably due to more difficult conditions in the "real-life" setting.
Conclusions:
A higher rate of false-alarm shows that a two-step screening is necessary. Therefore, increased resources for diagnostic procedures are required.