Johns Hopkins audiologist Stephen Bowditch recaps his presentation given at the Maryland Academy of Audiology Convention 2022 on the topic of transitioning patients from osseointegrated devices to cochlear implants. He has seen patients with single-sided deafness successfully make this switch and report improved quality of life and audiologic input.
My name is Steve Bowditch. I'm an audiologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital. I gave this presentation in September of 2022 to the Maryland Academy of Audiology specifically looking at a subgroup of our patients who have transitioned from an Osteo integrated or Baja device to a cochlear implant for their single sided deafness. In the past, patients with single sided deafness have had minimal options for technology. Um going back to the 1960s, they were allowed to use a cross device from a hearing aid standpoint. Um since the early 2000s they have been able to use an Osteo integrated device. Both of these technologies take sound from one side of their head and transmitted to the other side. So if a patient has poorer ear, the device is used on that poorer side and that information from that poorer side is sent to the good ear to be heard. While this technology has been successful for some patients in terms of opening up their sound field on that side, the technology lacks some of the binaural cues that these patients experienced prior to their loss in July of 2019. The FADA approved the cochlear implant technology for patients with single sided deafness. What this allows our patients to access is more binaural stimulation because the cochlear implant is electrically stimulating the ear with the impairment in our population here. We've had seven patients who have taken advantage of this transition moving from an OsteO integrated device to a cochlear implant. All of these patients have reported improved quality of life as well as quality of audio logic input specifically in areas of sound localization and speech and noise. A number of these patients have also reported improvements in their tinnitus management, as the cochlear implant directly stimulating the impaired ear has the better opportunity of reducing those internal noises. We expect this population to increase over time as more patients take advantage of this technology, we also have a growing population of patients starting off with cochlear implantation following their single sided deafness. Thank you very much.
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