Intensive care nursery noise and its influence on newborn hearing screening.

Numerous studies have recently reported the possible damaging effects noise exposure may have on premature infants. While noise levels appear to be within established damage risk criteria for an adult, there is little evidence to support the assumption that intensity levels and duration are similar for an infant population. It was the purpose of this study to measure sound pressure levels within an intensive care nursery and a series of isolettes and to report the behavioral pass/fail screening status of infants who were confined to those settings immediately after birth. It is suggested from the results of our study that due to the stimulus parameter used in behavioral testing, noise exposure is not an influencing factor in infant hearing screening.