DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2018.v06i11.061

Pages: 4498-4502

Over 5% of the world’s population or 466 million people have disabling hearing loss (432 million adults and 34 million children) as per World Health Organization report. Aim: The aim of our study was to find the prevalence of hearing impairment by Brainstem Evoked Response Audiometry (BERA) in high risk neonates admitted in tertiary care hospital in their follow up visit. The high risk neonates were tested for hearing by using portable Transient Evoked OtoAcoustic Emissions (TEOAE) before discharge from the hospital; follow up TEOAE performed after four weeks in study babies where initial testing gave refer response. Babies who tested refer on the follow-up, were subjected for BERA testing and involvement of central neuropathy and hearing impairment were studied. Among 124, 47(37.9%) babies were preterm, 36(29.0 %) babies were very low birth weight, 23(18.5%) babies were having perinatal asphyxia, 11(8.9%) babies had hyperbilirubinemia requiring exchange transfusion, 7 (5.6%) babies had sepsis. In their first hospital visit, among 124 neonates subjected to OAE, 94(75.8%) neonates had both ears pass response and 30(24.2%) neonates had referred response. BERA was done for neonates with refer response even in the second visit and hearing impairment was confirmed. Conclusion: Prevalence of hearing impairment in the high risk neonates are preterm neonates (19.1%), very low birth weight (5.6%), perinatal asphyxia (30.4%), hyperbilirubinemia requiring exchange transfusion (63.6%) and sepsis (14.3%). The involvement of central neuropathy (auditory nerve) was more in neonates with hyperbilirubinemia requiring exchange transfusion than other risk factors. This study suggests that periodic evaluation of high risk babies with simple, non-invasive test, OAE and BERA will help in monitoring the progress of auditory nerve impairment at the earliest which will influence the speech and future communication.