Hearing loss is the most common neurosensory deficit. It results from a variety of heritable and acquired causes and is linked to multiple deleterious effects on a child's development that can be ameliorated by prompt identification and individualized therapies. Diagnosing hearing loss in newborns is challenging, especially in mild or progressive cases, and its management requires a multidisciplinary team of healthcare providers comprising audiologists, pediatricians, otolaryngologists, and genetic counselors. While physiologic newborn hearing screening has resulted in earlier diagnosis of hearing loss than ever before, a growing body of knowledge supports the concurrent implementation of genetic and cytomegalovirus testing to offset the limitations inherent to a singular screening modality. In this review, we discuss the contemporary role of screening for hearing loss in newborns as well as future directions in its diagnosis and treatment.
Keywords: cytomegalovirus; deafness; genetic hearing loss; newborn screening; precision medicine.
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the West China School of Medicine & West China Hospital of Sichuan University.