Newborn hearing screening in Rio de Janeiro's municipal network, Brazil

Hearing deficiencies are a prevalent disease and justify the need for regulation of the Laws and their execution through Hearing Health Care Ordinances. In line with public policies, maternity hospitals that were part of the network began to implement the Newborn Hearing Screening (NHS) service, as had occurred in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The otoacoustic emissions test is used for NHS as it is a rapid and highly reliable method that is easy to perform and gives objective results. The scope of this article is to get fully acquainted with the assistance and care for the hearing health of newborns in maternity wards of the Municipal Health Grid. It is an observational, descriptive, cross-sectional analysis with frequency distribution, and was conducted at SMS-RJ Maternity hospitals that perform NHS. Three maternity hospitals with NHS (A, B and C) were identified, in which 1,865 live newborns were recorded. Of this total, 40.5% performed the NHS exam. In maternity hospitals A and B, the NHS exam was applied to 54.6%, of which 97.3% passed and only 1.8% failed and needed to be referred to the high complexity unit. The NHS is the initial stage of the Hearing Health Care Program for the newborn. It is important that the NHS services should be fully integrated into the network through the Hearing Health Care Program.

Deafness; Hearing screening; Hearing