Challenges of bone conduction hearing aid for children
Sunday, September 22, 2024
Hearing Aids
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S107
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11:00 AM
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12:00 PM
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Challenges of bone conduction hearing aid for children
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Dattier 3 – 83
Hearing Aids
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INT102
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Bone-masking tone audiometry in children: SAL method
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K.
Kristin
KERKHOFS (Belgium)
Content : In this presentation, we highlight some important aspects of bone conduction audiometry in young children. In addition, we will specifically focus on the SAL method, a forgotten method of masking. In this method, we place the bone conductor frontally and provide constant noise. By shifting the air conduction threshold, we obtain a relative bone conduction threshold for each ear. Thanks to its user-friendliness, this method can be successfully applied to very young children and difficult-to-test individuals
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INT103
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Bone conduction hearing aids for children
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C.
Cyrille
COUDERT (France)
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INT327
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Objective verification of audibility in bone conduction hearing devices
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A-C.
Ann-Charlotte
PERSSON (Gothenburg)
Content : Objective: To objectively measure audibility in patients wearing bone conduction devices (BCDs) with a new approach using a skin microphone at the patient’s forehead.
Design: The skin microphone was attached by a softband and shielded by an earmuff. This set-up was confirmed not to be influenced by neither noise floor nor sound bypassing the BCD. Sound field warble tones were used for measuring aided hearing thresholds and maximum power output (MPO) whereas an international speech test signal (ISTS) was presented at different speech levels.
29 subjects with different types and models of bone conduction devices (Baha, Ponto, BCI, Sentio, BoneBridge) were tested.
Results: The skin microphone responses at ISTS levels, hearing threshold and MPO, could be obtained in all patients. One patient with poor audibility will be highlighted as example. After adjusting the gain of the BCD, the patient was retested with the skin microphone (for verification) and with speech-in noise tests (for validation). Both tests confirmed an improved audibility after the adjustments.
In summary, the proposed measurement of audibility of speech using a skin microphone placed on the forehead is a promising method that can be used in a clinical setting for all types of BCDs. The proposed method can be used to determine the dynamic range of individual patients and to measure the audibility of individually fitted bone conducted devices, and to detect and help to improve a poor fitting.
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