Past News of The OAE Portal





Contents of this section: Year 2007



08/05
19/04


16/04
08/02
  • Dr. Ioannis Psaromatis (2007 guest editor) has provided us with an update of the screening practices in Greece. The update is placed in the section of Neonatal Screening - Programs from all over the World section.

30/01
  • While most of the efforts of the NHS-UNHS-and EHDI programs focus on the identification of hearing impairment in the newborn population , a relatively recent method, which has been applied in the Gynecology and Obstetrics Clinic Narodni front in Belgrade, Serbia, focuses on the estimation and monitoring of the hearing acuity of the fetus. Further developments in this area might include the possibility of estimating hearing deficits prenatal.


Ljiljana N. Jelicic graduated on Faculty for Special Education and Rehabilitation (Department for Logopedia) in Belgrade in 1999. She has been working in the Institute for Experimental Phonetics and Speech Pathology (IEPSP) in Belgrade from 1999 as speech and language therapist. Her interest on "fetal reaction to external sound stimuli" started with her Master thesis at the Center for Multidisciplinary studies, University in Belgrade. She is author and coauthor of about 30 scientific and professional papers. Since 2005 she has been a member of International Society of Prenatal Psychology and Medicine (ISPPM).

Dr. Ljiljana N. Jelicic has provided some preliminary highlights of the PHS procedure.

The procedure of Prenatal Hearing Screening (PHS) enables an approximation and an early detection of the degree of hearing development in a fetus (Sovilj, Jelicic et al, 2004). The procedure includes the following steps:

- Creation of documentation and anamnesis data.
- A standardized ultrasound examination.
- Blocking the ears of the pregnant woman, in order to exclude the influence of the sound stimulus to the mother’s auditory system.
- Determining the position of the fetus’ head.
- Determining the auricle of the fetus, turned towards the mother’s abdomen.
- Placing loudspeakers according to the vertical axis, 5 cm from pregnant abdomen, in the direction of the fetus’ ear.
- Positioning the a. cerebri media of the fetus.
- Reading basic values of Doppler-parameters of Pi and/or Ri.
- Generating of digitalized defined sound stimulus.
- Reading the peak values of Doppler-parameters of Pi and/or Ri.
- Measuring the time needed for the Doppler-parameters Pi and/or Ri values to return to basic value.

The PHS is applied in the period from 27 to 32 gestation weeks.
Sound stimuli are filtered 200 us clicks, with an intensity of 90 dB, stimulating the frequency range of 1500-4500 Hz.

PHS examines the circulation changes which are registered in the artery cerebri media (ACM). Doppler analyses of the blood flow are performed on the ultrasound apparatus with doppler and color doppler features using of convex and sector probe with frequency of 3.5MHz.

In the observed artery, the Doppler wave analysis is performed by registering the values of the Pulsatility index Pi (defined by Gosling, 1975 as PI=(S-D)/M).

An initial pilot study (Jelicic, Sovilj , 2005) has indicated that for PHS, the most valid is Pi parametre in relation to bulbar movements and Resistance index - Ri=S-D/ S (Pourcelot, 1974). Decrease or increase of Pi in ACM, which indicates peripheral vascular resistance (Evans, 1980), points to the increase or decrease of blood flow in the observed blood vessel. Pi values were measured at the state of rest - Pi basically (PiB) and following auditory stimulation - Pi reactions (PiR).

A positive reaction direction (PiR > PiB) indicates a blood flow decrease (increased resistance of a blood vessel) in the ACM of a fetus; a negative reaction direction (PiR < PiB) indicates a blood flow increase (decreased resistance of a blood vessel) in the ACM.


Note from the editor: A more detailed report on the data-analysis is expected in 2008.

18/01
  • The future highlights page has been updated with material related to the first 6 months of 2008.

12/01
  • NHS -2008 (Cernobbio , Italy) update:The deadline for submission of abstracts has been extended to February 1. The preliminary program is now available together with an update of the Auditory Neuropathy Conference.

04/01/2008
  • Our sponsor GSI-VIASYS has been purchased by the Cardinal Health group. Updated information on the AOAE and ASSR product lines are expected the first trimester of 2008.

22/12
  • The OAE Hardware pages were updated with recent material from Vivosonic on their Integrity™ V500 platform (TEOAE, DPOAE, ABR, ASSR). For more information on the platform you can contact Mr. Edward Goss at Vivosonic.

18/12
  • The OAE Hardware pages were updated with recent material from Interacoustics. Software improvements in a number of programs are reported below in the Interacoustics Updates page.

    EP15/EP25 v. 3.03 released on 1/2-2007
    * VEMP is now available for the ECLIPSE platform, either as a stand alone system or as part of the EP15 or EP25 system.
    * All ECLIPSEs and those MedPCs holding a USB driven board can be upgraded to hold the EP25 version 3.03 which has the option to add a VEMP license.

    ABRIS v. 1.05 released on 3/5-2007
    * The ABRIS module has been translated to German.

    DPOAE v. 1.02 released on 3/5-2007

    * The DPOAE module has been translated to German.
    * Improved pass criterion, variance and sideband check
    * An extra decimal has been added to DP and noise result in order to get a higher degree of accuracy.
    * Improved printout: The f1 frequency colon has been removed and a S/N level calculation added instead.

    TEOAE25 v. 3.04 released on 4/10-2007

    * Fixes a few minor bugs

    Interacoustics ASSR v. 1.01 released on 8/5-2007

    * Fixed a minor bug in the calibration application setup


14/12
8/12
  • Some delays are expected in the updates scheduled for November -December 2008, due to the maintenance of the Portal server and the indexing and evaluation of the 600 MB material accumulated so far !!!

  • We do apologize to the contributing authors, but considering the breaks due to the forthcoming festivities the postponed or delayed 2007 material will appear in early 2008.

05/12
  • The hardware pages were updated with recent product releases. Further updates are expected within the month of December.

03/11
  • The OAE Links page was updated with the latest available site links (unfortunately some older links were found inactive and were eliminated). Since the number of dedicated resources is low we have updated also the HTML page with a list of 100 resources (sites & documents) from a global Google search.

  • The Future Highlights page has been updated with the material for the rest of 2007 and the first trimester of 2008.

20/10
  • The hardware pages and the sponsor pages were further updated with recent product releases.

28/08
  • The OAE Links page was updated with the latest available site links. Since the number of dedicated resources is low we have also included a HTML page with a list of 100 resources (sites & documents) from a global Google search.

  • The meetings page has been updated with the latest information on the forthcoming NHS2008 Conference. The title is Beyond Newborn Hearing Screening: Infant and Childhood Hearing in Science and Clinical Practice. It will take place in June 19 - 21, 2008 at Cernobbio (Como Lake), Italy as in previous years.

  • The Future Highlights page has been updated with the material for the rest of 2007.

20/08
  • For technical reasons (+ the summer break) the work flow in the Portal has been delayed of approximately 60 days. The scheduled material will be incorporated in the presentations of August and September 2007.

  • The pages in the MEDLINE listing sections were updated with the latest 34 entries (volume 2) of 2007.
  • The Italian Authoring pages were updated with contributions from the Ferrara and Roma ISPESL groups.

  • From this month, the MEDLINE authoring sections will be presented in a slightly different manner. Since the MEDLINE database has been recently upgraded, it is possible to access for every indexed article a number of similar papers (based on a number of determined keywords). This makes searching a lot easier  and provides access to the works of each OAE working group. This new presentation style is provided experimentally with volume 2  (2007).
  • For the Italian Authoring groups, links to the corresponding group pages will be also provided directly from the MEDLINE volume pages (see volume 2 for example).

06/06
10/04
  • Due to a set of internal re-organization of the software facilities of the hosting institute (University of Ferrara), the pages of the Portal will be updated after May 7th.The possible 30-day delay in the updates will be evenly distributed in the months of May and June 2007.

14/03
28/02
26/01/2007



•            •            •              •  Main