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Universal newborn hearing screening is usually accomplished with an otoacoustic emissions (OAE) test performed shortly after birth before infants leave the hospital. Newborns who fail this test — most often due to false-positive results — undergo follow-up hearing screening within a few days or weeks. To examine if mode of delivery at birth affects screening results, researchers in Israel retrospectively examined OAE results in 1653 newborns; 84% were born at 37 to 41 weeks' gestation, and 29% were born by cesarean delivery. Only infants who passed repeat OAE tests or had normal follow-up auditory brainstem responses were included.
Overall, 21% of newborns failed initial OAE testing after cesarean delivery, and 7% failed after vaginal delive…