The Bone Anchored Hearing Aid (BAHA) is a hearing prosthesis that enables bone conducted amplified sound to be directly transmitted to the cochlea, and is suitable for a variety of hearing losses including, but not limited to chronic otitis externa, chronic suppurative otitis media, bilateral canal atresia, and more recently for those with ‘single sided deafness’. Validation of conventional hearing aid fittings is most often done through satisfactorily meeting gain requirements through in-situ or coupler measurements. This is unable to be performed for BAHA patients, so quality of life outcomes and patient satisfaction surveys have been employed to measure the impact the BAHA has on the life of the patient.
The Glasgow Hearing Aid Benefit Profile (GHABP) and a 10 point in-house developed questionnaire were given to 18 BAHA recipients with a variety of hearing configurations and measures were taken both pre- and post BAHA fitting.
Results indicate an initially high self perception of disability across all patients, including those with Unilateral Hearing Loss or Single Sided Deafness. After fitting of the BAHA there was an average of a 20% reduction in self perception of disability across all patients. Overall satisfaction scores average at 87% across the group, with satisfaction regarding ability to localise sound being the consistent domain where patients felt neutral.
The BAHA is an effective instrument in reducing the self perception of disability for those whose hearing loss satisfies the eligibility criteria. Further research is needed to compare the quality of life outcomes for those patients with Unilateral Hearing Loss who are fitted with CROS hearing aids to investigate if they are comparable to those with BAHA.