AUDIOLOGICAL RESULTS OF THE BONE-ANCHORED HEARING-AID HC200 - MULTICENTER RESULTS

Sixty-two patients with conductive or mixed hearing loss (average bone conduction threshold at 0.5, 1, and 2 kHz ranged from 1 to 44 dB hear ing level) were fitted with a bone-anchored hearing aid(BA Previously, 52 of them had used a conventional bone conduction hearing aid (CBHA) and 10 of them an air conduction hearing aid (ACHA). Audiological tes ts were conducted to compare the patients' performance with the BAHA t o that with their previous conventional hearing aid. In the speech rec ognition in quiet test, only 5 patients in the CBHA group improved sig nificantly: the majority had 100% scores with both hearing aids. In th e speech recognition in noise test, 28 patients improved significantly . The mean improvement in the signal to noise ratio (S/N) in the CBHA group was -2.3 +/- 2.4 dB. That none of the patients in the CBHA group performed worse with the BAHA led us to the conclusion that the BAHA is superior to the CBHA. None of the patients in the ACHA group achiev ed a better speech recognition in quiet score using the BAHA. On avera ge, there was no significant improvement in the SM ratio in the ACHA g roup, although in 6 patients the SM ratio improved significantly, and in 1 patient it worsened significantly. From the whole group, the perf ormance of only 2 patients, both in the ACHA group, was significantly worse with the BAHA on one of the speech recognition tests.