Bonded To The Bone – Bone Anchored Hearing Aids
February 5, 2010BAHA or Brain Anchored Hearing Aid is latest entrant in the market to help people with hearing problems. This hearing aid is to assist people suffering from unilateral hearing loss and conductive hearing loss. It is slightly different from the conventional hearing aids which are placed in ear drums directly and amplifies the sound to the person. It requires a surgical procedure and will take around six months from the time of surgery to improve the hearing.
As the name suggests Bone Anchored, this hearing aid is placed behind the bony structure of the ear. The first step in this new methodology is to surgically implant a Titanium stud like thing on the bony part behind the ear. It takes a minimum of three months for the stud to join with the bone properly. There is an abutment placed on the outside of the skin beneath which lies the stud. Now the BAHA can be placed on this abutment. This is typically a sound processor.
The hearing aid or the sound processor converts the incident sound into vibrations. These vibrations are made to reach the titanium stud placed in the skull. The titanium stud implanted surgically acts as a transducer. The main function of this titanium stud is to vibrate the skull or the bony structure behind the ear. These vibrations help in vibrating the nerves of the ear which enables proper hearing.
The BAHA works on small batteries or cells. The batteries need to be changed constantly every week or at the maximum of ten days. This is because the hearing aid battery doesn’t have a very good life. This aid is a huge boon particularly for people with SSD or Single-Sided-Deafness wherein one ear is good and the hearing in the other ear is very less or completely affected.
The BAHA was found to improve the sound quality significantly when compared to other conventional hearing aids. This hearing aid is also very comfortable to the user and the fact it is located behind the ear helps a few people who are embarrassed with the thought of wearing a hearing aid directly into the ear drum. Women find it comfortable with this as they can let their hair down thereby covering the aid.
This method needs constant observation and very good care. Since it requires a surgical procedure and with the abutment being exposed outside the skin there is a high risk of infection occurring. Good care must be taken and if there is infection it has to be treated at the earliest before it aggravates and starts spreading. The device is quite fragile as well and it requires good handling.
Siemens hearing aids are very reliable and trustworthy, definitely a brand worth checking out!



