Newborn hearing screening: Opportunities and challenges

Congenital hearing impairment in infants and children has been linked with lifelong deficits in speech and language acquisition, poor academic performance, personal-social maladjustments, and emotional difficulties. Great emphasis is placed on the importance of early detection, reliable diagnosis, and timely intervention with better chances of hearing impaired infants developing skills equivalent to their peers. This article describes the long journey that the newborn hearing screening process has passed through in the developed countries. It also discusses the requirements, equipment, programs and benefits. It emphasizes promoting newborn hearing screening as a national program with government involvement and elaborates the challenges facing newborn screening in developing countries. The main goal was encourage implementing national newborn screening in developing countries with a discussion of Egypt’s experience.