Communication

There are many things to think about! Communicating with your baby is one of the most important things to think about. Babies first communicate their needs by crying. How well your baby learns to communicate in other ways depends upon his or her hearing ability. Newborn hearing screening identifies hearing loss at an early age.

The goal of Universal Newborn Hearing Screening (UNHS) is for every baby born to have their hearing screened at birth. At birth means that babies in the nursery or intensive care unit have their hearing screened before leaving the hospital. Babies who are not born in the hospital and babies born at small hospitals are referred to a local center for screening. Not all countries have screening facilities so if you are unsure, you can contact the local department of health to find out where you can get your baby’s hearing screened/ checked.

Screening procedures are fast, reliable, inexpensive and painless. Follow-up testing is always necessary when the screening test is not passed. Babies are typically given several screening tests when they are born to identify common problems. One of the most common problems is hearing loss. Hearing loss occurs in about 3 babies in 1000 of healthy births. About 3 babies in 100 who have been in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) have hearing loss. It is important to identify hearing loss as early as possible to minimize the impact on the development of speech, language, and learning. Most countries have passed laws requiring hearing to be screened at birth.

In countries that do not have UNHS, behavioral testing like behavioral observation or visual reinforcement audiometry (VRA) can be used to determine if a child has a hearing loss. Very small babies will respond to sounds, however they must be somewhat loud. Even though a baby hears a soft sound, he is too little to show that he hears. When a sound is presented at the appropriate loudness for the age of your baby, he will probably scrunch his eyebrows or widen his eyes. These sounds are given across different frequencies from deep sounds to very squeaky sounds. Young babies quickly adapt to these sounds and stop responding, so you and the audiologist must watch carefully.

By itself, this test will not tell us the exact level of hearing loss. Combined with the other tests collected over the months, an audiogram of the child’s hearing can be graphed.