DUNCAN — By Barb Jernigan and Associated Press reports

A hearing problem is the No. 1 birth defect in the country. As a national standard, 3 percent of babies born will have some hearing loss.

State legislation enacted in 1999 that requires screenings for all newborns before they leave the hospital, yet of the estimated 52,000 births each year in Oklahoma, only 56 babies tested positive for hearing loss in 2005 and 51 babies in 2004.

“We should be finding 150 babies a year. This tells me they’re getting lost in the system,” said Jacque Scholl, audiologist for the Tulsa City-County Health Department.

At Duncan Regional Hospital, hearing screenings are a routine part of newborn care, but the hospital also offers periodic free screenings for toddlers to help catch those who might have fallen through the cracks.

Robin Emerson, Cindy Browning and Lesa Ivey are DRH’s speech/language pathologists who work in the hospital’s rehabilitative services department.

Emerson said the three offer free community-wide hearing screenings for preschoolers, usually 3 years of age and under, from time to time, although the last screening was in November of 2005.

It’s an important service, because hearing loss later in life may be brought about by illness (ear infections), injury or a family disposition for deafness.

“The hospitals are doing a fabulous job (in screening newborns). What’s happening is once they leave the hospital, parents are unaware of how important it is to get early intervention. We lose track of them,” said Scholl. Meredith Gatzemeyer, educational audiologist for Tulsa Public Schools, often discovers those children who did not get early help.

“I see kids from all spectrums. It’s hard to determine what happened before they came to school,” she said. “But we know the earlier we intervene, the better off the child is.”

Gatzemeyer said even if the child’s parents decide the child should use sign language rather than get cochlear implants or amplification, early intervention is key to keeping kids on track developmentally. Scholl agreed.

“She’ll (Gatzemeyer) find second-graders who are so delayed, they’ll never catch up. If we intervene early so they can speak and listen, they can be mainstreamed into regular classrooms,” said Scholl. She said many drugs used to keep babies alive in neonatal intensive care units are damaging to the small hair-like nerve cells that line the inside of the cochlea. Those cells are critical for hearing, and when damaged, result in hearing loss. Chemotherapy drugs also are poisonous to those nerve cells, she said. Education and awareness about such causes of hearing loss are vital for parents and doctors, Scholl said.

Unfortunately, many pediatricians still dismiss parental concerns about hearing and inform parents that hearing cannot be checked or does not need to be checked until the child is of school age, she said.

“Something happens in the first six months of life that we cannot go back and capture,” Scholl explained. “What that means for you and me is a lifetime of special education. Children are delayed because they’ve had no input.”

“I can test a newborn within an hour of birth and find out if there’s a profound hearing loss,” Scholl said. Babies are tested via auditory brainstem response, which focuses on the brain’s response to auditory stimulus. DRH is included in the 94 percent of Oklahoma hospitals who perform hearing screenings on newborns.

“DRH has done newborn hearing screening an all babies born here for a long time,” said Kim McCaleb, patient care manager for DRH’s Birth Center.

“The nurses in the Birth Center do the screening.”

McCaleb said new parents are also given a pamphlet explaining how the screening is done, available in both English and Spanish.

According to the brochure, the screening is non-invasive. It is computer-assisted, takes only a few minutes and most babies sleep through the test.

The equipment gives results as either “pass” or “refer.”

If a baby gets “refer,” more testing is needed later. “Pass” indicates that at the time of the screening the baby hears good enough for language development. The results of each newborn’s hearing test is provided to the parents and the state Department of Health,” explained McCaleb.

The pamphlet also warns that a “pass” does not mean the baby will not need to be tested again. For information, the toll-free number for the “Newborn Hearing Screening Program” is 1-800-766-2223. To reach the DRH speech pathologists, call 580-251-8460.