Background: Patients with single-sided deafness (SSD), where one ear has an unaidable hearing
loss and the other ear has normal or aidable hearing, often complain of difficulties
understanding speech and localizing sound sources, and report a higher self-perceived
hearing disability. Patients with SSD may benefit from using contralateral routing
of signal (CROS) or bilateral contralateral routing of the signal (BiCROS) amplification.
Dissatisfaction of previously available (Bi)CROS devices has been reported, such as,
interfering transmissions, low-fidelity sound quality, poor “user-friendly” set-up,
and a bulky and cosmetically cumbersome appearance.
Purpose: Recent advances in hearing aid technology have improved (Bi)CROS hearing aids; however,
these devices have not been experimentally evaluated. We hypothesized that newer technology
with reports of improved digital signal processing, wireless transmission, and physical
design would be as good, or better than, our participants' previous-generation BiCROS
systems.
Research Design: A within-subjects, pretest-posttest design was executed.
Study Sample: Thirty-nine veterans (one female, 38 males; mean age = 74 yr, range = 49–85 yr) from
the Audiology Section of the Bay Pines Veterans Affair Healthcare System participated.
All participants were previously experienced BiCROS hearing aid users with varying
degrees of sensorinerual hearing impairment in their better ear.
Intervention: Participants were provided at least 4 wk of consistent use with the new BiCROS.
Data Collection and Analyses: Participants completed three research visits. At Visit 1, with their previous BiCROS,
and at Visit 3, with their new BiCROS, the following objective and subjective measures
were obtained: (1) soundfield speech-in-noise testing using the Words-In-Noise (WIN)
test; (2) speech, spatial, and qualities of the hearing scale (SSQ) questionnaire;
(3) selected questions from the MarkeTrak questionnaire; and, (4) three open-ended
questions. Data were analyzed using parametric and nonparametric statistics.
Results: Overall, the objective (WIN) and subjective (SSQ, MarkeTrak, and open-ended questions)
measures indicated that the new BiCROS provided better outcomes than the previous
BiCROS system. In addition, an overlap of favorable results was seen across measures.
Conclusions: Of the 39 participants, 95% reported improvements with the new BiCROS and chose to
utilize the device regularly. The favorable objective and subjective outcomes indicate
that the new BiCROS system is as good, or better than, what was previously utilized
by our sample of veterans.
Key Words
Hearing aids - hearing loss - single-sided deafness - unilateral
