Incidence of otoacoustic emissions related to the weight of neonates

Abstract

One of the forms of making an early diagnosis of hearing losses is to analyze the records of Otoacoustic Emissions. The purpose of this piece of research was to verify the incidence of records of the Transiently Otoacoustic Emissions in two different populations of newborns: one with weights under 1.500g and the other with weights between 1.500g and 2.500g. The first one is considered to be a high risk group for hearing loss according to the Joint Commitment of Infant Hearing (1991). Based on the data analysis, we could observe that besides the weight, the population of newborns with weights under 1.500g shows other combined risk factors which contribute to the occurrence of impairments of the peripheral system.