Abstract
The performance of the most powerful Bone-Anchored Hearing Aid (BAHA) currently available, the BAHA Cordelle, was evaluated in 25 patients with severe to profound mixed hearing loss. Patients showed bone conduction thresholds at 500, 1000 and 2000 Hz, ranged between 30 and 70 dB HL, and an additional air-bone gap of about at least 30 dB. With the BAHA Cordelle, free-field thresholds improve relative to bone-conduction thresholds with 1.5, 5.0, 17.8, and 4.3 dB at 500, 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz, respectively, with substantial inter-individual variability. The differences in unaided air conduction thresholds and aided free-field thresholds amount to 45.3, 45.8, 47.5, and 43.5 dB at 500, 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz, respectively. Speech perception, measured both with monosyllables of the consonant-vowel-consonant type and with bisyllables, showed highly similar results. The fitting range of a (linear) hearing aid is determined by its gain characteristics. Requiring aided speech reception thresholds at or better than 65 dB SPL results in an upper limit of the fitting range of the BAHA Cordelle for bone-conduction thresholds of 51, 56, 67, and 58 dB HL at 500, 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz, respectively. The dynamic range provided by the BAHA Cordelle was estimated from loudness growth functions at 500, 1500, and 3000 Hz employing 7-point categorical scaling. On average, aided loudness growth functions exhibit normal slopes but they level off at input levels of about 80, 70, 65 dB SPL for 500, 1500, and 3000 Hz stimuli, respectively. Measurements with a skull simulator demonstrated that the levelling-off reflects saturation of the output of the Cordelle. The relatively low saturation levels of the device suggest that increasing maximum output levels may be a worthwhile consideration for candidates with more profound sensorineural loss.
