The Munich screening programme in neonates.

For development, it is necessary to stimulate the auditory pathway during the first weeks of life. This knowledge and improved techniques for the treatment of young children with hearing loss make early detection even more important, otherwise developmental disabilities inevitably occur. The method of transient-evoked otoacoustic emissions is the most useful test for neonatal screening and has the following advantages: emissions are quickly measured (i.e. within a few minutes), the measurements can be performed in the hospital nursery by trained volunteer examiners, the test produces the same results in awake, anaesthetized, sedated, and sleeping patients, and the existence of TEOAEs excludes with very high probability a peripheral hearing loss which may influence the development of speech. A prerequisite of a successful evaluation with crying and moving neonates is an apparatus with two specific rejection thresholds; one for time, the second for amplitude. Additionally, the probe has to be robust, but also small both to minimize its weight and to fit comfortably within the diameter of the neonatal ear canal.