Single Sided Deafness: A Treatment Option

Volume 5 - Issue 2

Bahgat El Sherif*

Received: September 12, 2020;   Published: September 25, 2020

DOI: 10.32474/SJO.2020.05.000209

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Abstract

Single sided deafness (SSD) is established when the patient has normal hearing in one ear and severe to profound hearing loss in the other one, and measured by pure tone audiometry as hearing threshold (over 0.5, 1, 2, and 4 KHz) of at least 70 dB hearing level in the affected ear and not more than 30 dB HL in the better ear. The causes of single sided deafness include many pathologies such as: temporal bone trauma, Meniere`s disease, vestibular schwannoma, cochleovestibular abnormalities, vascular ischemia, autoimmune disease, and infection. Idiopathic cause is commonly encountered. The advantages of binaural hearing include head shadow effect, binaural summation, and binaural squelch. The diminished ability to orient and understanding meaning of patient with SSD have negative impact on quality of life which may be equal the effect of bilateral loss, also, it may threaten safety. The conventional treatment of single sided deafness was contralateral routing of sound and Osseo integrated implants. Both forms of the treatment are effective in addressing head shadow effect but have no advantage to provide psychoacoustic information to deaf side i.e. squelch and summation effects, which are mandatory to improve speech perception in noise. The cochlear implant is the only treatment modality that offers bilateral listening that improve recognition in noise and sound localization. Results from studies and satisfaction questionnaire confirmed the superiority of CI and significant performance improvement regarding sound localization, speech perception and marked tinnitus improvement.

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