Prevalence of moderate or greater permanent childhood hearing impairment and effectiveness of targeted surveillance for babies who pass newborn hearing screening.

Objective: To assess the utility of targeted surveillance for the identification of moderate to profound PCHI in babies who pass newborn hearing screening in England and have risk factors.

Design: Retrospective analysis.

Study sample: A total of 3,957,891 children born 01/04/2012-31/03/2018 in England.

Results: A total of 7148 PCHI cases were identified (1.81 per 1,000 babies). 6,707 followed an immediate referral from the screen (1 per 16 referrals), 51 followed targeted surveillance referral (1 per 540 referrals) and 390 without a referral. Audiology uptake was higher following an immediate referral (96.7% overall, 77.2% within NHSP-defined timescales) than following targeted surveillance (63.8% overall, 51.1% within 52 weeks of birth). The screening was 94.5% sensitive overall, with similar sensitivities for each of the risk factors. General linearised logistic regression models identified syndrome as the risk factor with the highest odds ratio (14.08 for all babies, 22.19 for babies without immediate referral). Close family history of hearing loss was the next highest (10.93 for all babies, 12.29 for babies without immediate referral).

Conclusion: The evidence for a targeted surveillance programme, based on risk factors, for babies in England who pass the newborn screen is not strong.