Detection of hearing loss in young children and adults using otoacoustic emissions.

Measures of transient evoked otoacoustic emission (TEOAE) reproducibility were obtained for 506 ears of 260 children and young adults. Frequency-specific and whole reproducibility data were obtained using ILO88 hardware and software (version 3.92), and were analyzed with respect to pure tone threshold and emmittance data for the same ears. The 2,000-Hz reproducibility score was the most efficient of all measurements (0.85-0.91) in separating normal and hearing-impaired ears, regardless of the frequencies at which the hearing loss occurred. TEOAE reproducibility measures may be very useful in screening for hearing loss in babies, leading to the earliest identification of children with hearing loss.