Otoacoustic emissions latency difference between full-term and preterm neonates

Transiently evoked otoacoustic emissions (TEOAEs) were recorded from full-term and preterm neonates. The responses were decomposed, by means of an adaptive approximation method, into waveforms of defined frequencies, amplitudes, latencies and time spans. Statistically significant differences in the latency values were found between the tested groups. Differences were also found in the time spans of the TEOAEs components. For the preterm neonates the contribution of long-duration components (i.e. long-time span) was higher. Those components were characterized by narrow frequency band and contrary to the short-time span components their latencies did not depend on frequency. The removal of the long-duration components, from the pool of analyzed data, decreased the latency differences between the tested groups. The results indicate that the origin of the longer latency values for preterm neonates (with a post conceptional age up to 33 weeks) in respect to full-term neonates can be attributed to the presence of long-lasting components. The correspondence, which was found between frequencies of long-duration components and the spectral peaks of spontaneous otoacoustic emissions (SOAEs), suggests that those components may be connected with SOAEs.