title: Newborn hearing screening: experience in a Malaysian hospital.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  This study aims to determine the prevalence of hearing loss among newborns delivered at Hospital Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and to evaluate the usefulness of our hearing screening protocol.
  
  
  METHODS
  All infants born in the hospital over a nine-month period, between April to December 2003, were screened for hearing loss with a portable otoacoustic emission (OAE) before discharge. At the age of two months, a second OAE test was repeated on newborns who failed the initial test. Those who failed the second test were re-tested at three months of age. When these infants failed the third OAE test, a brainstem evoked response (BSER) test was performed.
  
  
  RESULTS
  During the study period, 4,219 infants were born in the hospital, and 3,762 (89.2 percent) underwent OAE screening. 620 (19.7 percent) of them failed the first screening test, and 506 (81.6 percent) of them came for a second stage-screening test. In the third stage screening at three months of age, only 39 (65 percent) patients turned up. Of these, ten infants passed the OAE test and 29 failed. However, when these infants underwent BSER, 13 had normal BSER and 16 have abnormal BSER. The prevalence of hearing loss in this study was 0.42 percent (16/3,762).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The large number of defaulters and false-positive results in this study suggest that this pilot hearing-screen programme requires fine-tuning to minimise these problems.
authors.affiliation: Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Jalan Yaakub Latif, 56000 Cheras, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. asmaent@yahoo.com
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Abdullah
authors.forename: M Y S
authors.initials: MY
authors.lastname: Hazim
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Almyzan
authors.forename: A G
authors.initials: AG
authors.lastname: Jamilah
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Roslin
authors.forename: M T
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Ann
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Borhan
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sani
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Saim
authors.forename: N Y
authors.initials: NY
authors.lastname: Boo
mesh_terms: D001300:Audiometry, Evoked Response; D016057:Evoked Potentials, Auditory, Brain Stem; D005189:False Positive Reactions; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D034381:Hearing Loss / Q000151:congenital / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D008296:Malaysia; D015997:Neonatal Screening; D017084:Otoacoustic Emissions, Spontaneous; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D015995:Prevalence