Hearing Impairment in Babies with Risk Indicators before Hospital Discharge

Introduction: Early hearing evaluation should be done before hospital discharge, especially among those with some risk indicator for hearing impairment. Changes detected before discharge should be reassessed after discharge with additional tests to confirm the type and degree of hearing loss.

Objective: The objective of this study was to determine the number of hearing disorders in infants with risk for hearing loss before hospital discharge.

Methodology: The auditory brainstem response was performed in a period of 6 months. In all babies, the examination was started in intensity of 80 dBnHL to verify the integrity of the auditory pathway, then search the minimal level of response was carried out to establish the electrophysiological threshold.

Results: Forty-nine infants with a mean age of 34 days were evaluated. The mean gestational age was 31 weeks, 98% of them stay more than 48 hours in the ICU, 69% were born weighing less than 1,500 g, 55% made use of ototoxic drugs, 28% used mechanical ventilation, 26% had low Apgar score, 12% had meningitis, 6% with congenital syphilis, and 2% with hyperbilirubinemia and cleft lip. We still had 12% with seizures and 8% with peri-intraventricular hemorrhage. The majority (96%) had electrophysiological threshold at 30dBnHL. Two babies had electrophysiological threshold at 40dBnHL on the right ear, on the left ear, one had threshold at 50dBnHL and another one at 60dBnHL.

Conclusion: Most of them showed electrophysiological evaluation within the normal range and only 4% of the evaluated ears were altered with elevation of the minimum level of response.

Keywords: hearing, risk index