Newborn hearing screening is now under way in hospitals around the state, said officials of the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control in a series of news conferences across the state Wednesday, June 3. Eight South Carolina hospitals, including MUSC, are participating in the pilot project.

The goal of the South Carolina Universal Newborn Hearing Screening Advisory Council, the driving force behind the screening effort, is to assure that by the year 2000, every infant born in South Carolina will be screened for hearing impairment.

This council was organized in 1997 and consists of audiologists, physicians, agency and community organization representatives, nurses, speech pathologists and parents. Alan Klein, Ph.D., MUSC associate professor of otolaryngology and communicative sciences and director of audiology, represents MUSC on the council.

“Hearing impairment is the most common disability in newborns,” said Ann Lockwood, coordinator of the Universal Newborn Hearing Screening Program with DHEC’s BabyNet Program. “More than 150 infants are born in South Carolina each year with some type of hearing impairment.” She said that hospitals are the most reasonable place to perform these early screenings.

Research has shown that 50 percent of infants who are hearing impaired at birth have no risk factors. Infants who are identified and receive appropriate intervention before six months of age can develop normal language and communications skills by the time the child enters school.

The decision to work toward implementation of universal hearing screening for South Carolina newborns was based on the following:

• The National Institutes of Health, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Audiology, the Joint Committee on Infant Hearing and the Healthy People 2000 Report have all recommended that children with congenital hearing loss be identified before six months of age.
• Speech and language develop most rapidly between birth and three years of age. Undetected hearing loss affects speech and language development, as well as social emotional and academic development.
• The average age of detection of hearing loss in the United States is 2.5 - three years, with many children not being identified until they enter school at five or six years of age.
• Even mild degrees of hearing loss affect speech and language development.
• Hearing impaired infants can be fit with amplification as early as six weeks of age. When appropriate intervention services are begun immediately, children with normal cognitive development have language development within the normal range.