Abstract
Objective
The ADHEAR system (MED-EL, Innsbruck, Austria) is a new adhesive bone conduction hearing aid. This study evaluates the audiological benefit and subjective satisfaction as well as the manageability in everyday life in children with unilateral conductive hearing loss.
Methods
Ten children with unilateral hearing loss of different origin were included in the study. The audiological assessment included sound field audiometry and speech intelligibility in quiet and in noise, which was tested unaided and after 4 weeks of wearing the hearing system. Subjective benefit and satisfaction with the system was assessed using the SSQ for parents. With a second system-specific questionnaire, suitability for everyday use and quality of life were queried.
Results
With ADHEAR, speech perception in quiet improved by 44%. The word recognition score in noise improved from 11.7% in the unaided situation to 46.7% with the ADHEAR system. The SSQ for parents demonstrates a subjective benefit and satisfaction with the system.
Conclusion
ADHEAR is an effective treatment option for children with unilateral conductive hearing loss. Especially children who are not eligible for semi-implantable hearing systems or do not accept hearing devices on a softband can benefit from this device.
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The author Daniel Hirth and Roxanne Weiss received a financial support for attending the symposium “Deutscher HNO-Kongress” 2019 in Berlin. The other authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
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All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards by the ethics committee of the medical faculty Frankfurt (EC code 92/17) and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.
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Informed consent was obtained from all participants included in the study.
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Hirth, D., Weiss, R., Stöver, T. et al. Audiological benefit and subjective satisfaction with the ADHEAR hearing system in children with unilateral conductive hearing loss. Eur Arch Otorhinolaryngol 278, 2781–2788 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00405-020-06364-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00405-020-06364-2