Question
How can I identify potential candidates for non-surgical and surgical Bone Anchored Hearing Solutions (BAHS) with the Ponto system?
Answer
Let's take a look at our indication categories for our candidacy for BAHS. We have two main categories, conductive mixed hearing loss and single-sided.
For our conductive mixed hearing loss patients, there are various reasons a patient may have conductive or mixed hearing loss. Some of those etiologies include atresia microtia, chronic otitis media, cholesteatoma, otosclerosis, middle ear dysfunction or disease, and externa otitis. Our processors can fit up to a 65 dBHL bone conduction average (500, 1k, 2k, and 3k Hz).
With our conductive mixed hearing losses, a lot of the times, they're unilateral, but we do have bilateral patients walking around this way as well. Our hope with bilateral, and as we progress, we'll talk about what we can give these patients and why we would fit a bilateral Ponto system. The criteria here is that we want that bone conduction to be symmetrical to be able to give back some of those binaural cues that were usually missing, or that we would be missing if we only fit one processor.
Our other indication would be our single-sided deafness population. Again, a variety of etiologies, sudden deafness, acoustic neuroma, trauma, and Meniere's disease are many reasons we could also have this type of audiogram. Our criteria for a single-sided deafness candidate would be that their good ear, have near-normal bone conduction or air conduction would be the same average (500, 1k, 2k, and 3k Hz). So that's their better ear, their other ear is going be non-functioning, a deaf cochlea. These are your CROS patients. CROS and Ponto have a place in there in that trial and determining which one is best for the patients. All of your surgical candidates must be five years or older, which is the FDA approval to have a surgical bone conduction system.
This Ask the Expert is an excerpt from The Ponto System: Assessing Candidacy & Completing Pre-operative Evaluation of Bone Anchored Hearing Systems. For more information, visit oticonmedical.com/us or visit Oticon Medical's Partner Page on AudiologyOnline.