 The BAHA (Bone Anchored Hearing Aid) can be of tremendous benefit to certain types of hearing loss.
The BAHA device consists of a surgically implanted titanium fixture behind the ear, onto which clips a small microphone/sound processor. Sound is conducted through the bone of the skull to the inner ear fluids directly, bypassing the external and middle ear.
There are two situations where this is used. One is conductive hearing loss in patients who would not do well with a conventional hearing aid. This includes patients who have had previous ear surgery or who are prone to chronic ear infections.
Another situation is for patients who are deaf in one ear with normal or near-normal hearing in the other ear. This is termed “single-sided deafness.” This can occur in patients who have had sudden sensorineural hearing loss that has not recovered, tumors of the hearing nerve, or congenital single-sided deafness. Single sided deafness creates several challenges: Understanding people speaking in a noisy environment is significantly worse with one ear compared to two; sounds coming to the deaf side cannot be heard because of the “head shadow” that a deaf ear creates; and localizing sounds is nearly impossible with only one ear.
In this situation the BAHA routes sound from the bad ear through the bone of the skull to the good ear, improving all of the challenges that single-sided deafness creates. The procedure to implant the fixture is outpatient surgery done under either local or general anesthesia (link to ORlive webcast).
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