Treatment of the Atretic Ear With Round Window Vibrant Soundbridge Implantation in Infants and Children

Abstract

Infants and children with moderate-to-severe conductive or mixed hearing loss, not suitable or unwilling to accept Bone-Anchored Hearing Aids and who would not tolerate traditional bone and air conduction hearing aids, obtain substantial benefit with the FMT-RW implantation procedure. Intraoperative ECoG is of significant help in achieving the best FMT-RW fitting.

Does Coupling and Positioning in Vibroplasty Matter? A Prospective Cohort Study

“…Nine patients presented with a conductive hearing loss, six had a mixed hearing loss, and one patient a sensorineural hearing loss. All subjects could not benefit from conventional hearing aids because of chronic otitis externa (Subjects 9, 12), chronic suppurative otitis media (Subjects 1, 3, 4, 5, 6,7,8,10,11,13,14,16), severe to profound mixed hearing loss (Subject 2), and a non-healing external auditory canal resulting from carcinoma removal (Subject 15). The cochlear (bone conduction hearing threshold) of all patients met the manufacturer's specifications and all patients had speech perception results above 50% in the ear considered for implantation.…”

“…Conversely, Skarzynski et al (13) report better coupling with direct FMT to RW contact. Mandala et al (14) examined positioning of the FMT in 14 children with congenital aural atresia and conductive or mixed hearing loss, and their results found that fascia overlying the FMT and cartilage packing gave the best ECoG recordings. Rajan et al (8) investigated the coupling efficiency in seven patients with mixed HL and one with conductive hearing loss.…”

Vibrant Soundbridge Rehabilitation of Conductive and Mixed Hearing Loss

“…Following a statement by an international consensus paper 9 the VSB has already been implanted in newborns. 10 Because the middle ear structures are fully developed at the time of birth and because the VSB uses a single-point attachment in the middle ear, patient growth is not expected to change the VSB performance over time. However, the limitations for a postimplant magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan are more restrictive in children, and it is recommended to carefully weigh the pros and cons of the VSB against all alternative therapies before implantation in children.…”

A Case of the Vibrant Soundbridge Implantation to Unilateral Congenital Aural Atresia

“…However, the Colletti group has been working on VSB in infants and younger children. Their results are positive for implantation in patients as young as 2 months old [27]. We advocate the installation of VSB in patients of 18 months old, by which time the middle ear can comfortably accommodate the FMT.…”