About Newborn Hearing Screening
The newborn hearing screening is a short assessment to test for hearing loss in newborn children. These tests are usually done soon after birth. One possible test is an Automated Auditory Brainstem Response (AARB) and another is Otoacoustic Emissions (OAE). AARB uses electrodes to measure brain activity in response to sound, while OAE uses a small probe to measure echo response. In general, failure to pass the test twice will signal to doctors that the infant should undergo further evaluation to test for hearing loss.