Prior to joining Cochlear, Dr. Cire has worked as a field specialist for Phonak Hearing Systems and has been a practicing Audiologist for 30 years. He has worked both in stand-alone private practice and as the director of an ENT affiliated Audiology Practice. His specialty interests are in the areas of clinical verification of amplification and vestibular diagnostics and treatment. Our site uses cookies to improve your experience.
By using our site, you agree to our Privacy Policy. This article is sponsored by Cochlear Americas. Thank you for joining us today for our HOPE online series. As a matter of disclaimer, I am going be talking about a number of devices that Cochlear does not manufacture or distribute, because the purpose of this presentation is to show the landscape of what is available for patients with single-sided deafness SSD. This is information that I have gained from the public domain as a student of this particular segment of audiology and hearing rehabilitation.
SSD is defined as a condition where an individual has non-functional hearing in one ear and receives no clinical benefit from amplification in that ear, with the contralateral ear possessing normal audiometric function. We define normal audiometric function as hearing thresholds that are no poorer than 20 dB hearing level HL for pure-tone averages of. The non-functional ear can be, but is not limited to, a profound hearing loss.
The key factor is that the poor or "bad" ear has not or will not receive benefit when traditional acoustic amplification is applied. The "good" ear must have a pure-tone average that is 20 dB or better across the pure-tone range. SSD can be defined relative to a bone-conduction device such as Baha. The use of a Baha device for SSD is intended to improve speech recognition. SSD is an indication for a Baha for patients who suffer from unilateral sensorineural deafness on one ear, while the other ear has normal hearing of no worse than 20 dB.
Over the evolution of this product, and because of changes in classification for reimbursement purposes, we no longer refer to a Baha as a hearing aid; we refer to it as an auditory osseointegrated implant system. Before SSD was a recognized term, we lived with the description of unilateral sensorineural hearing loss, and it was usually in the profound category. The term single-sided deafness was actually coined by the predecessor company, Entific, when they started offering Baha for SSD.
