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Abstract
Early detection of hearing loss in neonates is important for normal language development, especially for infants admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) because the infants in NICU have a higher incidence of hearing loss than healthy infants. However, the risk factors of hearing loss in infants admitted to the NICU have not been fully acknowledged, especially in Korea, although they may vary according to the circumstances of each country and hospital. In this study, the risk factors of hearing loss in NICU infants were analyzed by using the newborn hearing screening (NHS) and the diagnostic auditory brainstem response (ABR) test results from a 13-year period. A retrospective chart review was performed using a list of NICU infants who had performed NHS from 2004 to 2017 (n = 2404) in a university hospital in Korea. For the hearing loss group, the hearing threshold was defined as 35 dB nHL or more in the ABR test performed in infants with a ‘refer’ result in the NHS. A four multiple number of infants who had passed the NHS test and matched the age and gender of the hearing loss group were taken as the control group. Various patient factors and treatment factors were taken as hearing loss related variables and were analyzed and compared. From the 2404 infants involved, the prevalence of hearing loss was 1.8% (n = 43). A comparison between the hearing loss group (n = 43) and the control group (n = 172) revealed that history of sepsis, peak total bilirubin, duration of vancomycin use, days of phototherapy, and exposure to loop-inhibiting diuretics were significantly different, and can be verified as significant risk factors for hearing loss in NICU infants.
Highlights
Hearing is essential for normal development of the child’s language [1]
Long-term retrospective data were collected for 2404 infants who had been hospitalized in neonatal intensive care unit (NICU)
For quantitative data where the standard deviation (SD) exceed mean values, we presented median and interquartile range to avoid bias due to unnormal distribution of data, and in other cases, we expressed the mean and SD
Summary
Hearing is essential for normal development of the child’s language [1]. Hearing impairment in the early stage of life may lead to cognition, learning, and social degradation [2]. Without appropriate treatment, hearing disturbance can lead to communication problems or academic failure and to social and psychological difficulties [3]. Many studies have claimed that early identification of hearing loss and intervention contribute to better outcomes in language development over the entire lifetime [1,4,5]. The incidence of bilateral severe hearing loss in all newborns is 2 to 3 per 1000 [6]. The newborns in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) have a much higher incidence of hearing loss than that of normal babies; 20 to 50 per 1000 newborns [7].
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