Artikel
Improvement of speech perception in patients with BAHA
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Veröffentlicht: | 22. September 2005 |
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Gliederung
Text
Supply of bone ancored hearing aids (BAHA) has proven to be sufficient for hearing rehabilitation in patients with conductive hearing loss not accessable for otosurgical improvement. Additionally, treatment of patients with unilateral deafness appears to be beneficial by transcranial contralateral cochlear stimulation.
We present the data of speech perception tests in patients with variuos hearing conditions, i.e. conductive hearing loss, combined hearing loss and unilateral deafness before and after fitting of BAHA. In addition to conventional speech perception test, patients undewent an alternating binaural speech test in noise.
Patients with conductive hearing loss reached 100% discrimination of monosyllabic words between 65 and 85dB (SPL). An improvement of 20% in discrimination of monosyllabic words at 65dB (SPL) was recorded with BAHA when compared to conventional bone conduction hearing aids. Speech perception using short, everyday sentences applied in noise showed a reduction in the signal noise ratio of up to 11dB for both the conventional BAHA users and the BAHA CROS users in comparison to the unaided as well as the conventional hearing aid conditions.
These studies show that, in audiological terms, the BAHA is superior to conventional bone conduction devices. It is an excellent perspective for hearing rehabilitation in patients with unilateral deafness.