[Neonatal Hearing Screening and Early Intervention, a screening program to evaluate all infants to identify the hearing impaired].

BACKGROUND: Neonatal Hearing Screening and Early Intervention (NHSEI) is a screening program to evaluate all infants and identify those with hearing impairment. The objective of this work was to determine the factors associated with hearing loss in NHSEI program.

METHODS: Analytical cross-sectional study was performed. 234 infants were included in the NHSEI program, hearing was evaluated with transitory evoked otoacoustic emissions (TEOE) at frequencies of 1.5 to 4.5 kHz, and intensity of stimuli of 40-60 dB. The variables were: age from one to 28 days, sex, gestational age and perinatal history. Data was analyzed with descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression.

RESULTS: The presence of risk factors in newborns resulted in significant omnibus test (p < 0.05) predicted value by Nagelkerke R square model of 77%. The background inherited family acquired infection, craniofacial abnormalities, low birth weight, respiratory distress at birth and genetic syndromes were factors significantly associated (p < 0.05) to hearing loss in infants.

CONCLUSIONS: The incidence of hearing impairment in infants diagnosed by newborn hearing program was higher (5/234 newborns) than the reported in the literature.