My baby girl was born on 3rd october premature at 32 weeks. She was in NICU for 3 weeks due to infection. Her OAE test results REFER however the child responds to sound of rattles. When the child cries and we use rattle to soothe her she stops crying instantly Please suggest of she has hearing loss.

Dr. Sajeev KumarGeneral Physician32yrs exp

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Apparently she has no hearing loss. But the OAE test detects the loss of hearing to serai frequencies and may repoat it at a later stage he 4 types of otoacoustic emissions are as follows: Spontaneous otoacoustic emissions (SOAEs) - Sounds emitted without an acoustic stimulus (ie, spontaneously) Transient otoacoustic emissions (TOAEs) or transient evoked otoacoustic emissions (TEOAEs) - Sounds emitted in response to an acoustic stimuli of very short duration; usually clicks but can be tone-bursts Distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs) - Sounds emitted in response to 2 simultaneous tones of different frequencies Sustained-frequency otoacoustic emissions (SFOAEs) - Sounds emitted in response to a continuous tone. Pure-tone (PT) audiometry measures throughout the outer ear, middle ear, cochlea, cranial nerve (CN) VIII, and central auditory system. However, OAEs measure only the peripheral auditory system, which includes the outer ear, middle ear, and cochlea. The response only emanates from the cochlea, but the outer and middle ear must be able to transmit the emitted sound back to the recording microphone. OAE testing often is used as a screening tool to determine the presence or absence of cochlear function, although analysis can be performed for individual cochlear frequency regions. OAEs cannot be used to fully describe an individual's auditory thresholds, but they can help question or validate other threshold measures (eg, in suspected functional [feigned] hearing loss), or they can provide information about the site of the lesion. Using current technology, most researchers and clinicians find a correlation between frequency-specific analysis of TOAEs/DPOAEs and cochlear hearing loss. However, at this juncture, the correlation cannot fully describe auditory threshold. Naturally, a correlation would not be expected for noncochlear hearing loss. 

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