Consensus on Bone-Anchored Hearing Aid Fittings

Question

Is there a consensus among audiologists on how to best fit patients with bone-anchored devices? Furthermore, are there any tests we should be routinely completing?

Answer

This is a timely question. The first Oticon Medical Forum on Bone-Anchored Solutions was held this past spring to address this topic. Before the forum, we sent out a short questionnaire to professionals asking what they saw as the main challenges of treating patients with bone-anchored devices and also what they do to evaluate patients, verify the devices, and manage individuals in the short and long term.

We compiled all the responses and conducted the meeting in a highly interactive, informal, roundtable format. We also invited Dr. Michael Valente from Washington University to give a presentation on single-sided deafness and discuss recent research in this area. Some of the audiologists reported using different tools in their assessment and management including aided sound-field thresholds and speech testing in quiet and noise, such as using the HINT and QuickSIN.

They also reported using qualitative measures, such as the Adult Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit (APHAB) and the Single-Sided Questionnaire (SSQ). These are all good measures, but how do we know which tool is the best? Can we take measures developed for hearing aid fittings and apply them to bone-anchored fittings? We are not sure, and we need more evidence.

There was a consensus that everyone is doing things differently, and that there is no standard or reference as to how patients, adults and children, should be evaluated preoperatively and postoperatively or how performance should be verified with bone-anchored devices.

The good news is that there is a best practices guideline for bone-anchored solutions in process at the American Academy of Audiology, under a Task Force chaired by Dr. Michael Valente. It is a long process to develop guidelines, but when we have them, they will be a great resource. There is a hope that there will be a guideline for adults and another one for children.

For more information about Oticon Medical, visit www.oticonmedical.com/ or the Oticon Medical web channel on AudiologyOnline.

Dr. Ravi Sockalingam is the director of clinical research and professional relations for Oticon Medical LLC. A native of Singapore, he completed his training in speech pathology and audiology at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia where he also received his PhD in Audiology. As a full time faculty in audiology he had taught and undertaken research in various areas of audiology in Australia, Israel, Canada, China, New Zealand. Prior to joining Oticon Medical LLC in Dec 2010, he was the senior audiologist and manager of audiology communications at Oticon's international headquarters in Smorum, Denmark for three years.