Abstract
It has been suggested that universal neonatal hearing screening may cause unnecessary maternal anxiety (Bess, 1994). The objective of this cross-sectional interview study was to identify and compare the prevalence and degree of maternal anxiety at the time of initial hearing screen and at a 2-4 week rescreen for first stage refers (fails). A second objective was to identify the maternal demographic factors that affect levels of anxiety in each sample of mothers. The 157 mothers interviewed at the time of initial hearing screen were unaware of the screen results. The 20 mothers interviewed at the time of a rescreen were aware of the results of the initial screen but had not yet received the results of the rescreen. Results n(%) shown: Although only 3.8% of mothers in the initial screen population were worried or very worried, this increased to 40% in the rescreen population, p =.001. Higher levels of maternal anxiety in the initial screen population were associated with: lower maternal education, p =.023, ↑ number of children, p =.002, lack of knowledge of screen during admission to hospital (vs. before admission), p =.012, and a trend for non-private insurance, p =.083 and lower SES, p=.07. In the rescreen population, ↑ levels of maternal anxiety were associated with low maternal education (p =.027), non-white maternal race, p=.001 and a trend for non English speaking, p =.06. We conclude that the incidence of significant maternal anxiety at the time of neonatal hearing screening is low, and that maternal anxiety during rescreens increases significantly. Therefore, efforts must be directed to minimizing the first stage false positive rate for neonatal hearing screening to limit unnecessary anxiety during rescreens. These data also indicate that poorly educated, non-insured, non-white, uninformed mothers are at increased risk of experiencing anxiety about their infant's hearing screen and hearing screen programs must direct their educational efforts towards these socially at risk mothers. Table
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