Hearing screening using auditory steady state responses obtained by simultaneous air- and bone-conduction stimuli.

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES Minimising false positives rates is an important goal of universal newborn hearing screening programmes. An adequate way for reaching that goal could be differentiating between transient conductive hearing losses (false positives) and permanent sensorineural hearing impairments (true positives) by means of a methodology that studies electrophysiological responses obtained using both air- and bone-conduction stimuli. Our objective was to evaluate the efficiency of an automated hearing screening test based on auditory steady state responses obtained using simultaneous air- and bone-conduction stimuli. METHODS A sample of 80 high risk babies lees than 2 months of born were screened using the automatic screening test. A confirmatory clinical and electrophysiological evaluation was used as the gold standard. RESULTS The estimated diagnostic efficiency of this screening test was equivalent (100% sensitivity and 97.7% specificity) to the efficiency reported for otoacoustic emissions and automated auditory brainstem responses. The introduction of bone conduction in the screening reduced the false positive rate from 13.3% to 2.2%. The test duration was 5.3 (± 1.9)min. In 34% of babies only one repetition of the test was needed to raising the result. CONCLUSIONS The screening test performed quite well in this initial clinical trial, differentiating transient conductive hearing losses from permanent neurosensory impairments and improving the diagnostic efficiency of auditory steady state responses.