The BAHA ® System

Types of hearing loss the BAHA ® System can help Unilateral sensori-neural hearing loss/Single Sided Deafness –Due to examples such as: Acoustic neuroma tumors Sudden deafness Neurological degenerative disease Trauma Ototoxic treatments Inner ear malformation Genetics Meniere’s Disease

BAHA ® Candidate Single Sided Deafness > 5years of age Intended to improve speech recognition Intended for patients with SSD (unilateral sensori-neural hearing loss) when the other ear is normal Normal hearing is defined as PTA AC threshold equal to or better than 20 dB at.5, 1, 2 and 3kHz For patients who cannot or will not use AC CROS HA Functions by transcranial routing of the signal

How does the BAHA ® System work for SSD?

Head-shadow Effect Review For speech the overall reduction of effective intensity is approximately 6 dB (Tillman etal., 1963) Its effect on speech intelligibility is approximately a reduction of 23% when sound is coming directly from the ‘bad’ ear side Binaural amplification in eliminating the head shadow effect can be about 25% or 6 dB improvement Minimal effect at 1500Hz, but continues upward to approximately 15 dB at 5000 Hz (Staab 1988b) in the S/N ratio (from the Handbook of Clinical Audiology, Katz)

Unilateral Deafness Handicap of unilateral deafness was UNDERESTIMATED Complaints of unilateral deafness: –Difficulty understanding speech in noise –Difficulty hearing sounds presented on the deaf side –Unbalanced environment From Wazen et al. presented at AAO-HNS Meeting, San Diego, September 2002 Initial findings

SSD Questionnaire Results from BAHA ® System Wearers 70%  wearing the BAHA ® 7 days per week 94%  used the device > 8 hours per day 70%  improvement in quality of life 88%  better performance at a dinner table, when a person sitting on their deaf side 88%  better performance while talking to one person among a group of people. Average satisfaction score = 8 / 10 point scale From Wazen et al. presented at AAO-HNS Meeting, San Diego, September 2002