TUESDAY, Feb. 22 (HealthDay News) -- Bone-anchored hearing aid (BAHA) fitting can be beneficial for children with bilateral or unilateral conductive hearing loss, according to a study published in the February issue of the Archives of Otolaryngology -- Head & Neck Surgery.
Maarten J.F. de Wolf, M.D., from the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre in the Netherlands, and colleagues conducted a retrospective study on 38 hearing-impaired children to evaluate the benefits of BAHA in their daily lives. The children included in the study had either bilateral conductive or mixed hearing loss (BHL) with normal cognition (BHL-NC), BHL with mental disability, or unilateral conductive hearing loss (UHL). All children were at least 4 years old at the time of BAHA fitting and had used it for one to four years. The benefits of BAHA use were assessed using the Glasgow Children's Benefit Inventory (GCBI), the Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit (APHAB), and the Health Utilities Index Mark 3 (HUI-3).
The investigators found that, in all the groups, the HUI-3 scores for health utility and disability index were comparable. Similarly, all the children benefited according to the GCBI. The APHAB showed a mean overall benefit in all groups. On an individual level, the APHAB showed that more children in the BHL-NC group reported clinically significant benefits compared to the UHL group (70 versus 27 percent).
"The BAHA is beneficial for children with BHL. Children with normal cognition and those with mental disability gave positive subjective reports about the BAHA," the authors write.
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