BULENT GUNDUZ, CUMHUR BİLGİN, CAGİL GOKDOGAN, HAKAN TUTAR, YILDIRIM A BAYAZİT, NEBİL GOKSU
The Journal of International Advanced Otology - 2013;9(1):55-60
Objective: To evaluate patient satisfaction and quality of life with the bone-anchored hearing aid (BAHA) in Turkish population. Patients and methods: Twenty adult patients who had conductive or mixed hearing loss were included. Two of 20 patients could not use BAHA due to cosmetic and social reasons. Age ranged from 16-60 years. Pre and postoperative audiological assessment included pure tone and speech audiometry and free field audiometric evaluation. Satisfaction and quality of life evaluations were performed by using The International Outcome Inventory for Hearing Aids (IO-IHA). Results: The surgical procedure did not cause any significant changes in the residual air and bone conduction thresholds (p>0.05). The free field hearing thresholds in all frequencies significantly improved after BAHA application (p<0.05). Maximum functional gain was observed at 1000 Hz, minimum functional gain was observed at 250 Hz. In sound proof and acoustic environments where the signal to noise ratio was 10, speech discrimination scores improved significantly with BAHA (p<0.05). The “total” mean IOIHA score with BAHA was 30.44±3.73 (ranged from 22 to 35). Total satisfaction rate with BAHA was 86.97 %. Conclusions: BAHA application possesses almost no risk in terms of loss of the residual hearing. It facilitates hearing amplification significantly in various types hearing losses. It seems that patient satisfaction rate is high and quality of life is increased with BAHA in our population.
