Newborn Hearing Screening
When babies are born at Sanford Medical Center Worthington, they will have their hearing screened by a Women’s Center staff person. The device used is called the ALGO Newborn Hearing Screener. This is a routine test (which lasts between 4-7 minutes) performed to rule out the possibility that your baby could have a hearing impairment. Hearing impairment affects approximately three out of every 1,000 newborns. If not detected and treated early, hearing impairment can contribute to language delays, as well as academic and social emotional delays.
If your baby PASSES the hearing screen, this means that your baby hears at levels required for normal speech and language development at the time of the screen. If your baby REFERS the hearing screen, this does not mean that your child has a hearing impairment. A REFER result from the ALGO screener simply means that your child needs to undergo further testing to determine if there is a hearing impairment. Further testing will be conducted by an audiologist.