Who Can Benefit?

Candidates for the BahaŽ System include individuals with certain conductive or mixed hearing loss. These types of hearing losses can be congenital (present at birth) or acquired, and causes include malformation of outer or middle ear such as congenital atresia, or cholesteatoma, otosclerosis, trauma, or infections of the ear.

In addition, patients who have single-sided deafness (SSD) can benefit from the BahaŽ System. Sudden deafness in one ear can result from viral infections, Meniere's disease, head trauma, measles, chicken pox, or acoustic neuroma (benign tumor of the hearing nerve that must be surgically removed). The only traditional solution is a CROS (contralateral hearing of signals) hearing aid, which require placement of devices on both ears. With the BahaŽ System, the implanted device is placed only in the bone behind the deaf ear, with sound transmission to the inner ear of the other side, providing two-sided hearing.