Evoked otoacoustic emissions in infant hearing screening.

The main application of the ILO88 otodynamic otoacoustic analyser is clearly in detecting whether the peripheral auditory system is normal or pathological. The evoked otoacoustic emission technique in normal and hearing-impaired children for which audiometric data were known (n = 422 ears) was first performed. The correlation was excellent. The actual experimental group (n = 258 ears) consisted of children who are difficult to test with the conventional screening methods in school health services. The use of evoked otoacoustic emissions as screening instrument is new, and therefore several minimal practical criteria, advantages and limitations were defined. The evoked otoacoustic emission test tool is especially applicable in difficult to test children using conventional screening methods.