Improvement in early detection of congenital hearing impairment due to universal newborn hearing screening

Objective: The aim of this study was to determine whether universal newborn hearing screening (UNHS) is effective in increasing the number of children whose hearing impairment is detected early, i.e. within the first 6 months of life. it also investigated whether UNHS contributes most to the early d etection of moderately and severely hearing-impaired newborns, as suggested by a recently published report. Methods: The study consisted of a retrospe ctive analysis of the data of all children born in Tyrol between 1980 and 1 999 and having an at least moderate permanent hearing loss in the better ea r. Results: The findings are that since UNHS was introduced in some newborn nurseries in 1995, a substantially higher number of hearing-impaired child ren has been detected early. For the whole sample, the increase of the earl y detection rate is 39.9%, with a 95% confidence interval of 33.2-46.8% (P< 0.0001). For moderate hearing loss the increase is 49.2 with a 95% confiden ce intervall of 39.6-58.8% (P=0.000). Conclusions: On the whole, our findin gs lend support to the view that UNHS is effective in early detection of co ngenital hearing impairment. We conclude that UNHS provides the greatest be nefit for moderately hearing-impaired children who, otherwise, would have b een detected last. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserv ed.