Introduction:

Since 1972, the Joint Committee on Infant Hearing (JCIH) in the USA has proposed the early audiological evaluation of every children born with certain risk factors (RF), because of these RF have been associated frequently with hearing loss. After universal hearing screening became a reality, it was also indicated that newborns with permanent postnatal or delayed-onset hearing loss (DH) RF should be followed.

Methods:

The results obtained after 25 years of application of a neonatal auditory screening program at the HCU in Valladolid (Spain) are analyzed, looking for the performance obtained with the follow-up of children with RF of DH.

Results:

We evaluated 27,649 newborns and detected 0.25 per thousand with DH. This represents 8% of congenital hearing loss and 0.65% of newborns with RF. The family history of hearing loss and the presence of malformations or syndromes that associate hearing loss are in our environment the RF with higher prevalence of DH. DH usually is bilateral and neurosensorial, with a high percentage (23%) of mild degree.

Discussion/Conclusions:

The monitoring of risk factors proposed by the JCIH as DH indicators is neither effective nor economically profitable. Given the importance of DH, we consider that the follow-up of children with high prevalence of RF should be maintained, in addition to this, we realized that half of them have not associate RF, for this reason, we think that a neonatal study of genetic tests for hearing loss should be carried out together with citomegalovirus screening.:

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