Application of Acceptable Noise Level to Confirm Fitting Strategy for Bone-Anchored Hearing Aid

Since there is no standardized fitting procedure for bone-anchored hearing aid (BAHA) patients, many clinics have failed to perform their successful fitting. The present case study tried to identify whether acceptable noise level (ANL) was clinically applied as one of fitting procedures for the BAHA users. Four hearing-impaired adults with BAHA (3 female and 1 male) who had a period of hearing deprivation for at least 8 years and the BAHA experience of more than 1 year participated. They conducted ANL in their unaided and aided BAHA conditions after being familiar with the ANL instruction. Also, the subjects responded to a self-report of Korean version of Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit (K-PHAB) to subjectively check amount of satisfaction with BAHA. Compared to the unaided condition, two out of four BAHA users showed a decreased ANL in the aided condition whereas the other users had a slightly increased ANL. Regardless, their levels were examined within the permissible range except for one subject. Their K-PHAB scores were similar to the ANL results in the aided condition. Although measured ANLs were slightly differed from the users, the current results suggest that ANL might be a tool to measure individual’s inherent value when the BAHA fitting being appropriated while also supported by K-PHAB scores. In the following study, we need to confirm a typical pattern of many BAHA users with longitudinal measures of ANL.