If a baby is born the first thing what is being checked is if everything is complete like fingers, hands, feet,…
Also its reflexes are being checked, the eyes, the blood,…
What is still commonly ignored is the newborns' hearing. The reason might be that hearing is an inconspicuous sense and it cannot be seen right away if a hearing loss is present or not.
However, not having detected a newborn's hearing loss may have a great impact on its language and speech development, communication and social skills as well as academic outcome and the chance later in life to get a job.
In order to detect a present hearing loss in a baby screening tests are applied. These tests have a short duration and do not require medication and give immediate information about the baby's hearing status. This is important because a high number of babies must be tested in a short period of time. Screening tests can be done from the 3 rd day after birth. The result will be a “Pass” (hearing ok) or a “Refer” (hearing loss maybe present).
The kind of test usually applied for Neonatal Hearing Screening Program is most commonly OAE (Otoacoustic Emmissions).
