Functional benefit of the bone-anchored hearing aid with different auditory profiles: objective and subjective...

To examine sentence recognition and self-report outcomes in hearing-impaired persons with different auditory profiles and who were fitted unilaterally with a bone-anchored hearing aid.

Prospective cohort study.

Tertiary referral unit.

Data were collected of six patients with single-sided deafness (SSD), seven with a mild to severe hearing loss at the bone-anchored hearing aid side and (near-)normal hearing at the other side and six with a severe bilateral hearing loss.

Sound field thresholds, and sentence recognition in noise (presented from different angles) with bone-anchored hearing aid, without bone-anchored hearing aid and with bone-anchored hearing aid and other ear occluded. In addition, the Speech, Spatial and Qualities of hearing scale and the Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit questionnaire were administered as self-report measures.

Patients with single-sided deafness listened mainly with their non-bone-anchored hearing aid ear, although the bone-anchored hearing aid lifted the head shadow effect. Patients with mild to severe hearing loss at the bone-anchored hearing aid side and (near-)normal hearing at the other side performed significantly differently in aided and unaided conditions and even regained limited binaural sensitivity with the device. The latter was also true for the patients with severe bilateral hearing loss. However, their hearing loss at the non-bone-anchored hearing aid side was too great to contribute to hearing and they listened predominantly with their bone-anchored hearing aid. Self-report outcomes provided useful information on hearing disability, although this information was not significantly differently for the 3 groups of patients.

The bone-anchored hearing aid enhanced performance in different hearing configurations, albeit to different extents.