Acoustic environment profile of the neonatal intensive care unit: High ambient noise and limited language exposure

Infants in single-patient neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) rooms may experience developmental language delay because of reduced language exposure. We evaluated the acoustic profile of a level IV NICU using Language Environment Analysis (LENA) for 40 singleton infants. Mean and peak sound levels were consistently above 45 dB the recommended standard. NICU patients experienced substantial variability in language exposure (range: 10–2040 words per hour). Neither noise levels nor word counts were associated with illness severity, gestational age, or postmenstrual age at the time of recording. Noise levels were not driven by spoken language, which suggests that interventions to optimize the NICU acoustic environment should focus on minimizing facility noise, and that interventions designed to enrich neonatal language exposure may not significantly raise ambient noise levels.