Does Early Identification of Hearing Loss Make a Difference in Language Outcomes? :

Although newborn hearing screening is universal in the United States, many studies have shown that the time from an abnormal screening test to follow-up can be long. How important is early follow-up?  Ching et al. (10.1542/peds.2016-4274) explore that question by studying children at 5 years of age with hearing loss using hearing aids or cochlear implants in terms of when the hearing intervention was implemented relative to  the development of language skills in these children.  The investigators followed a cohort of children controlling for a number of factors such as nonverbal cognitive ability, degree of hearing loss and other potential confounders.  The results show that the more serious the hearing deficit, the more important it is to detect the hearing loss as early as possible. More specifically, those who received a hearing aid or cochlear implant at 24 months had poorer language than those who got an intervention at 3 months as a result of detection at birth.  If you are looking for a reason to improve newborn hearing screening, read this study and then let your new parents hear about it from you if they question the need for newborn screening at birth.