Dr. Charles Auerbach, professor at Wurzweiler School of Social Work, co-authored an article with four colleagues examining the incidence of hearing failure among newborns in births where the mother delivers two or more offspring. Titled “Characterization of newborn hearing screening failures in multigestational births,” it will appear in the February 2018 issue of International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology. The objective of the study was to define the rate and characterize the type of newborn hearing screening failures in multigestational births. To do this, the researchers reviewed the charts of all multigestational births from 2002 to 2012 in the Northwell Health System on Long Island, in which at least one newborn failed the newborn hearing screening at two tertiary care hospitals. They identified a greater than expected risk in this population of conductive hearing loss (that is, a hearing loss that occurs when there is a problem conducting sound waves through the ear’s structure) than sensorineural hearing loss (caused by damaged to the auditory nerves or the cochlea). They also concluded that the conductive hearing loss was not attributable to otitis media (a group of inflammatory diseases of the middle ear). These observations are consistent with the increased risk of birth defects in multigestational births.