Early evaluation ensures babies can hear</tile> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta http-equiv="description" content="Early evaluation ensures babies can hear"> <meta http-equiv="keywords" content="Early,evaluation,ensures,babies,can,hear"> </head> <body> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr> <td width="10" height="39"> </td> <td width="99%" height="39"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr> <td width="16%"><a href="http://inttranews.inttra.net"><img src="http://inttranews.inttra.net/images/inttranews_grey_2.jpg" width="192" height="37" border="0"></a></td> <td width="50%" valign="middle"> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"><b><font color="#CCCCCC" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">KNOW.<br> HOW.</font></b></font> </p> </td> <td width="34%" align="right" valign="top"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1" color="#666666">13-12-2004</font></td> </tr> </table> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="10"> </td> <td width="99%" > </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="10"> </td> <td width="99%" > <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr> <td width="100%"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"> <b>Early evaluation ensures babies can hear</b></font> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%"> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%"> <img src="http://inttranews.inttra.net/img_news/img_YXhu1zkJYXySoapcatAC_0.jpg" align="left" vspace="5" hspace="5" ><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Des Moines, USA (DesMoinesRegister.com): Thirty-three babies a day are born in the United States with profound hearing loss, and as many as 99 a day are born with partial hearing loss. It is the single most common birth defect, and it is largely invisible. <br>This year, Iowa became the 38th state to pass the Early Hearing Detection and Intervention bill requiring hospitals to screen all newborns before being sent home. Oregon went further in a bill passed this year by creating a test registry, tracking and recall system, and an advisory committee to foster follow-up audiological evaluations <br>The impact on language development and ultimately on education is considerable. A study in Colorado of 294 infants with confirmed hearing loss showed that 80 percent identified by screening achieved normal language skills by age 5 <br> <br>For more information, please visit: <br><a href="http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041211/OPINION03/41210015/1110" target="blank">www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041211/OPINION03/41210015/1110</a> <br></font></td> </tr> </table> </td></tr> </table> <script type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="<http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show