When a parent or legal guardian provides consent for a baby to have risk factor screening for Permanent Hearing Loss (PHL), the Infant Hearing Program (IHP) requests the testing be performed by Newborn Screening Ontario (NSO). If NSO can locate a suitable sample, it will be tested. However, sometimes a suitable sample is not available for testing.
1. No sample can be identified at NSO: This could be because a dried blood spot sample was never obtained or the personal health identifiers provided were insufficient or did not match (for example, no health card number provided and a change of name). A newborn screening sample can still be taken. Please note that testing for Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is not reliable if the baby is older than 3 weeks of age when the sample is collected. In this circumstance, genetic risk factor screening can still be performed.
2. A sample is located at NSO but there is not enough sample remaining to perform the tests. An additional newborn screening sample can still be taken. Please note that testing for cytomegalovirus (CMV) is not reliable if the baby is older than 3 weeks of age when the sample is collected. In this circumstance, genetic risk factor screening can still be performed on the additional sample that is received.
3. A sample is located at NSO but was collected from a baby at greater than 3 weeks of age. Testing for Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is not reliable if the baby is older than 3 weeks of age when the sample is collected and will not be performed. Genetic risk factor screening can still be done.
In all of these scenarios a report will be sent to the Infant Hearing Program informing them that NSO was unable to test a sample.