The ages of intervention in regions with and without universal newborn hearing screening and prevalence of childhood hearing impairment in Australia

This article aims to (1) examine the impact of newborn hearing screening on age of hearing aid fitting, and (2) estimate the prevalence of permanent childhood hearing impairment and its profile across age and degree of impairment in Australia. The data were drawn from the Australian Hearing national database on all aided children under 21 years of age as at December 2006. The results indicated that children who were screened and diagnosed soon after birth were fitted by a median age of 3.4 months in New South Wales. The prevalence of moderate and more severe hearing loss (three-frequency average in the better ear of ≥ 40 dB HL) rises from 1.04/1000 live births at 3 years of age to 1.57/1000 live births for children between 9 and 16 years of age. The prevalence of mild degrees of hearing loss (three-frequency average in the better ear < 40 dB HL) rises from 0.28/1000 live births at 3 years of age to 1.68/1000 live births at 9 years of age and older. The findings show that early detection leads to early amplification. The change in prevalence with age implies that newborn hearing screening needs to be supplemented by hearing screening at later ages of early childhood so that timely amplification can be provided.