[Results and considerations regarding auditory neonatal screening based on the use of transient evoked otoacoustic...

The authors present a 5-year clinical experience in audiological screening performed at the neonatal center of the Policlinico of Perugia, Italy. The study was performed using an IL088 Otodynamics unit produced by Bray & Kemp. A total of 1328 newborns (2656 ears) were tested on the 4th day of life and during spontaneous sleep. None of the children had any audiological risk factors. The test was repeated one month later for all subjects who lacked Transient Evoked Otoacoustic Emissions and in many cases ABR testing was performed by 3 months of age. The authors present the undoubted advantages of the present method which include the fact that it is a) easy to perform, b) non invasive, c) sensitive and d) effective. They then discuss the main problems which arose during the course of the screening and advance some solutions. For the most part these problems involved the high number of false positives (13.1%) and the high percentage of subjects who were lost to subsequent controls (approximately 6% of the total population). The number of false positives could be reduced by using a linear acoustic stimulation (rather than the non-linear stimulation which is the default parameter for the machine). Such a linear stimulation can improve the signal-to-noise ratio, thus making it possible to adopt a reproducibility index lower than the 70% presently used (however, this brings with it the risk of including a certain number of false negatives). Finally, they discuss the possibility of only retesting those subjects with bilateral lack of TEOAEs, thus reducing the number of check-ups to be performed a month later.