title: Bone-anchored hearing aids in patients with acquired and congenital unilateral inner ear deafness (Baha CROS): clinical evaluation of 56 cases.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  We performed an evaluation of the audiological and subjective benefits of the bone-anchored hearing aid (Baha) as a device for transcranial routing of sound (Baha CROS) in 56 patients with unilateral inner ear deafness.
  
  
  METHODS
  We performed a prospective clinical follow-up study in a tertiary referral center. Previously reported results of 29 patients were supplemented with a second series of 30 patients with unilateral inner ear deafness; 3 patients dropped out during the evaluation. Audiometric measurements were taken before and after Baha CROS fitting. Subjective benefits were quantified with 4 different patient questionnaires.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The sound localization results in a well-structured test setting were not differentiable from chance. The 5 patients with congenital hearing loss showed better scores in the unaided sound localization measurements. Overall, most patients reported some subjective improvement in their capacity to localize sounds with the Baha CROS in daily life. The main effect of the Baha CROS was to alleviate the head shadow effect during the speech-in-noise test.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Poor sound localization in this larger series of patients confirms the findings of previous studies. Improvements in the speech-in-noise scores corroborated the efficacy of the Baha CROS in alleviating the head shadow effect. The 4 different patient questionnaires revealed subjective benefit and satisfaction in various domains.
authors.affiliation: Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Myrthe K S
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Hol
authors.forename: Sylvia J W
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Kunst
authors.forename: Ad F M
authors.initials: AF
authors.lastname: Snik
authors.forename: Arjan J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Bosman
authors.forename: Emmanuel A M
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Mylanus
authors.forename: Cor W R J
authors.initials: CW
authors.lastname: Cremers
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001844:Bone Conduction / Q000502:physiology; D004867:Equipment Design; D005260:Female; D006310:Hearing Aids; D046088:Hearing Loss, Unilateral / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D013017:Sound Localization; D013069:Speech Reception Threshold Test