[Hearing evaluation on newborn babies and its ethical implications].

The study has as purpose to examine the bibliographic production that investigates the use of the test of otoacoustic emissions in newborn babies done in hospitals. It gives emphasis in the approval of the mentioned article along the Research Ethics Committee. The method consists on bibliographic revision of national articles published in Brazilian journals. The research was realized in databases of the virtual library in health (http://www.bireme.br) and at the search engine Google (http://www.google.com.br), considering the period of 2004 to 2006. The key words used were: otoacoustic emissions and hearing triage or equivalent expressions in newborn babies in hospitals. Another source was the manual search in reference lists of the selected articles. After the application of the inclusion rules, nine articles were selected in five different journals. The citation of the approval of the Ethics Committee and the signature of the Free Consent Term, which were cleared by the responsible, were present in the majority of the articles and it demonstrates the concern and respect of the researchers of this area with the participant citizen on the study.