Community-based newborn hearing screening programme for early detection of permanent hearing loss in Iran: an eight-year cross-sectional study from 2005 to 2012.

Objectives: We here present the results of the first eight years of the newborn hearing screening programme in Iran, with a view to establishing the prevalence of hearing impairment among infants, and the efficacy of the programme.

Methods: A total of 3,350,995 infants were screened using the series method of transient evoked otoacoustic emissions (TEOAEs)/automated auditory brainstem responses (AABRs), between 2005 and 2012. The infants were first tested for TEOAEs (three times).