ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC STIMULATION - AN OPTION WHEN HEARING AIDS ARE NOT ENOUGH

Abstract

Individuals with steeply sloping high frequency hearing loss can often hear speech but fail to understand it, and conventional treatments, including frequency transposition hearing aids, are usually ineffective when the hearing loss is severe or profound. Electro-acoustic stimulation (EAS) is a relatively new treatment option for this population, in which mid-high frequency information is provided by a cochlear implant (CI) inserted into the basal turn of the cochlea, supplemented by low frequency acoustic amplification. New atraumatic CI electrode arrays and surgical techniques have been shown to facilitate low frequency hearing preservation sufficiently to allow the use of EAS in the majority of suitable candidates. Clinical studies have consistently demonstrated synergistic combination of mid-high frequency information delivered electrically by a CI with low frequencies delivered acoustically, providing superior performance to that obtained from a CI alone.

Keywords

• Hearing loss
• Conventional hearing aids
• electro-acoustic-stimulation