METHOD FOR FITTING A BONE ANCHORED HEARING AID TO A USER AND BONE ANCHORED BONE CONDUCTION HEARING AID SYSTEM

Hitherto, for persons with impaired hearing who cannot use an air conduction hearing aid, the only alternative has been a conventional spring-loaded bone conduction hearing aid. Now, with minor surgery, a titanium screw can be implanted in the bone behind the ear and a coupling, which penetrates the skin, can be attached, giving a new kind of hearing aid—the “bone-anchored hearing aid.” Improved quality of sound is one of the patients’ subjective assessments. Improvement was not confirmed by a standard speech-discrimination test. With new speech material consisting of sentences in noise, the speech-to-noise ratio (SN) has been determined for 24 patients. Patients who previously used a conventional bone conduction hearing aid improved their SN on the average by 3.3 dB. The most important difference between the two aids related to improved SN is probably the increased audibility between 600 and 6000 Hz.

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Binaural Application of the Bone-Anchored Hearing Aid

Annals of Otology Rhinology & Laryngology ◽

10.1177/000348949810700301 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 107 (3) ◽

pp. 187-193 ◽

Cited By ~ 31

Author(s):

Ad F. M. Snik ◽

Andy J. Beynon ◽

Catharina T. M. van der Pouw ◽

Emmanuel A. M. Mylanus ◽

Cor W. R. J. Cremers

Keyword(s):

Speech Recognition ◽

Sound Localization ◽

Hearing Aids ◽

Hearing Aid ◽

Bone Conduction ◽

Listening Condition ◽

Bone Anchored Hearing Aid ◽

Bone Conduction Hearing ◽

Bone Conduction Hearing Aid ◽

Binaural Listening

Most, but not all, hearing-impaired patients with air conduction hearing aids prefer binaural amplification instead of monaural amplification. The binaural application of the bone conduction hearing aid is more disputable, because the attenuation (in decibels) of sound waves across the skull is so small (10 dB) that even one bone conduction hearing aid will stimulate both cochleas approximately to the same extent. Binaural fitting of the bone-anchored hearing aid was studied in three experienced bone-anchored hearing aid users. The experiments showed that sound localization, and speech recognition in quiet and also under certain noisy conditions improved significantly with binaural listening compared to the monaural listening condition. On the average, the percentage of correct identifications (within 45°) in the sound localization experiment improved by 53% with binaural listening; the speech reception threshold in quiet improved by 4.4 dB. The binaural advantage in the speech-in-noise test was comparable to that of a control group of subjects with normal hearing listening monaurally versus binaurally. The improvements in the scores were ascribed to diotic summation (improved speech recognition in quiet) and the ability to separate sounds in the binaural listening condition (improved sound localization and improved speech recognition in noise whenever the speech and noise signals came from different directions). All three patients preferred the binaural bone-anchored hearing aids and used them all day.

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Speech Recognition with the Bone-Anchored Hearing Aid Determined Objectively and Subjectively

Ear Nose & Throat Journal ◽

10.1177/014556139407300211 ◽

1994 ◽

Vol 73 (2) ◽

pp. 115-117 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

AFM Snik ◽

EAM Mylanus ◽

CWRJ Cremers

Keyword(s):

Speech Recognition ◽

Hearing Aid ◽

Skin Irritation ◽

Bone Conduction ◽

Bone Anchored Hearing Aid ◽

Bone Conduction Hearing ◽

Bone Conduction Hearing Aid ◽

Air Conduction ◽

Head Level ◽

Better Than

Some patients with a bone-conduction hearing aid experience serious problems such as skin irritation or headaches and inconsistency in the sound quality due to shifting of the transducer over the mastoid. The Bone Anchored Hearing Aid (BAHA) provides direct bone-conduction and therefore evades these problems. Results of 58 patients fitted with either the head level BAHA HC200 or the more powerful HC220 were available for evaluation. Speech recognition-in-quiet and in-noise tests were performed in order to make a comparison between the patients’ performance with their individually adapted BAHA and their previous hearing aid. Furthermore, all the patients filled out a questionnaire, involving questions on speech recognition-in-quiet and in-noisy surroundings. Individual comparisons of the audiological and questionnaire results in the subgroup of patients who had used a bone-conduction hearing aid showed that the results with the BAHA were comparable with or significantly better than those with the previous bone-conduction hearing aid. The results in the patients who had previously used an air-conduction hearing aid were ambiguous.

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