Early Tests On Newborns Can Detect Hearing Loss

When Kelly Pefley of Richland was a baby in the 1960s, her mother suspected she could not hear.

But when doctors shook a rattle near her ear, she would turn her head - her eye catching the motion near the edge of her field of vision. Her hearing was fine, doctors said.

In fact, she had no hearing in one ear and severe loss in the other. The loss went undiagnosed until at 2-1/2 she had not begun to talk.

Even today, that’s the average age at which hearing loss is detected in a child - costing valuable years when other babies and toddlers are learning speech and language.

But that may change thanks to new testing equipment and a push to make the test part of the routine check of all newborns.

“The whole idea is early identification and treatment,” said Frank Aiello, an audiologist at Columbia Basin Hearing Center.

Even though the equipment - called an otoacoustic emissions analyzer - is new to the Tri-Cities, it’s used routinely elsewhere. It’s simple enough that some hospitals use volunteers to do the checks, and it’s about as quick, and just as painless, as a shake of a rattle - though much more accurate.

In Rhode Island, every newborn has the test performed before being released from the hospital.

That’s what Aiello would like to see here, and he’s encouraging hospitals to add the test to others they routinely perform on newborns.

About one baby in 1,000 is born with severe hearing loss, and another four to five have moderate to mild hearing loss that may not be detected until about the age they start elementary school. For babies in neonatal intensive care units, the rate of hearing loss is higher. Fifteen per 1,000 usually have a severe to profound hearing loss.

Pefley’s baby, Morgan, had her hearing checked at age 9 weeks Monday with the new otoacoustic system at Columbia Basin Hearing Center in Richland.

What looks like an ear plug attached to a cord was fitted into Morgan’s ear. The device sends a soft clicking sound into the baby’s ear. If the baby’s hearing is normal, the tiny hairs inside the ear vibrate and send an echo back out the ear.

The otoacoustic emission analyzer checks for the echo. In Morgan’s case, the echo was there. And in the three minutes it took audiologist Rebecca Pixley to test her hearing and pronounce it fine, the baby was asleep.

If the analyzer does not pick up the echo, that alerts parents and audiologists to a possible problem. It could be something as simple as a temporary ear infection or it could signify nerve damage that will require more expensive tests.

But the earlier the problem is caught, the fewer problems a child should have.

Pefley said she was learning delayed because she did not start to talk until she was 3.

Long before babies learn to talk, they’re learning to identify sounds and picking up the meaning of words.

Even mild to moderate loss interferes with the development of language and speech skills, Aiello said.