On the Effect of Bimodal Rehabilitation in Asymmetric Hearing Loss.

Simonetta Monini,Chiara Filippi,Maurizio Barbara,Alessandra De Luca,Gerardo Salerno

doi:10.3390/jcm10173927

Simonetta Monini, Chiara Filippi + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm10173927

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Abstract

Background: Bone conductive implants (BCI) have been reported to provide greater beneficial effects for the auditory and perceptual functions of the contralateral ear in patients presenting with asymmetric hearing loss (AHL) compared to those with single-sided deafness (SSD). The aim of the study was to assess the effects of wearing a conventional hearing aid in the contralateral ear on BCI in terms of an improved overall auditory performance. Methods: eleven AHL subjects wearing a BCI in their worse hearing ear underwent an auditory evaluation by pure tone and speech audiometry in free field. This study group was obtained by adding to the AHL patients those SSD subjects that, during the follow-up, showed deterioration of the hearing threshold of the contralateral ear, thus presenting with the features of AHL. Four different conditions were tested and compared: unaided, with BCI only, with contralateral hearing aid (CHA) only and with BCI combined with CHA. Results: all of the prosthetic conditions caused a significant improvement with respect to the unaided condition. When a CHA was adopted, its combination with the BCI showed significantly better auditory performances than those achieved with the BCI only. Conclusions: the present study suggests the beneficial role of a CHA in BCI-implanted AHL subjects in terms of overall auditory performance.

Highlights

Single-sided deafness (SSD) and asymmetric hearing loss (AHL) represent two distinctive audiological conditions that differ on the basis of having the contralateral, better-hearing ear either normal or impaired by hearing loss to different degrees
The auditory rehabilitation of these conditions can be performed by either a contralateral route of signal (CROS) hearing aid, a bone conductive implant (BCI) or a cochlear implantation (CI), the latter only enabling near recovery to true binaural hearing
Contrary to previous reports [4], it was recently shown that Bone conductive implants (BCI) implantation in the worse ear of AHL subjects could be beneficial for the auditory and perceptual functions, with better effects in the context of an single-sided deafness (SSD) condition that, due to the presence of normal or near-normal function in one ear, obviously impedes any further hearing gain [5]

Summary

Introduction

Single-sided deafness (SSD) and asymmetric hearing loss (AHL) represent two distinctive audiological conditions that differ on the basis of having the contralateral, better-hearing ear either normal or impaired by hearing loss to different degrees. Contrary to previous reports [4], it was recently shown that BCI implantation in the worse ear of AHL subjects could be beneficial for the auditory and perceptual functions, with better effects in the context of an SSD condition that, due to the presence of normal or near-normal function in one ear, obviously impedes any further hearing gain (ceiling effect) [5] In both SSD and AHL conditions, an improved quality of the perceived sound along with quality-of-life parameters has been reported [5,6,7,8,9]. Conclusions: the present study suggests the beneficial role of a CHA in BCI-implanted AHL subjects in terms of overall auditory performance

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