Which Oticon Medical bone-anchored processor should I choose for my patient?

Question

Answer

For some patients it is an obvious choice but for others it's more of a discussion. We first need to look at the fitting ranges. 

The Ponto 4 is suited for hearing losses up to 45 dB HL on the bone conduction side of things. With any device if you're going over 35 dB, particularly if you're seeing a person that has a faster progressing loss, then you're going to want to look to a device that they can grow into. For single sided deafness, patients need to have normal thresholds on their better hearing ear up to the average of 20 dB HL.

For the Ponto 3 SuperPower, you're looking at the underlying hearing loss and the bone conduction levels up to 65 db HL. For the single sided deafness, same thing, the hearing thresholds on the other ear should be relatively normal.

Conductive hearing loss: If you have a patient who has a conductive loss and good underlying cochlear function, then I would probably use Ponto 4. I know that there are benefits to a higher MFO. However, the benefits of the smaller device, streaming possibilities, and OpenSound Navigator in the Ponto 4 would be the one for me.

Mixed hearing loss: In these cases, I may let the patient try the Ponto 4 and Ponto 3 SuperPower. Perhaps discuss with them the relative merits of both. Mixed hearing losses typically are not simple scenarios and I think it's important to these conversations. For the significant mixed losses with the bone conduction thresholds greater than 40 dB HL then I would go with the Ponto 3 SuperPower. 

With a softband fitting, I would generally recommend the Ponto 3 SuperPower. This is my typical choice for pediatric softband fittings. 

This Ask The Expert is an excerpt from the webinar, Ponto System - A Few Minutes to Change Your Life.