Vibrating Sound Bridge (VSB) Indications (I) 1.1 Bilateral moderate to severe sensorineural deafness

  I. Indications-Patient selection 1. Moderate to severe sensorineural deafness: 1) Bilateral moderate to severe sensorineural deafness After excluding postcochlear or central lesions, patients who are not satisfied with the effect of traditional hearing aids or cannot wear hearing aids due to ear canal problems (e.g., infection, atresia) but do not yet need or cannot use electronic cochlear implants due to conditions, select the heavier side for implantation of vibrating The sound bridge, after switch-on adaptation, showed significant hearing improvement in terms of pure-tone hearing threshold, speech recognition rate, and patient’s self-assessment, both in long-term (>11 years) and short-term (2 months) effects, and better results over time [2-5 ]. Compared to conventional hearing aids, the sound quality was more natural, free of echo and blocking effect, and there was a significant improvement in speech recognition especially in noisy environments [6-8 ]. From the results of Pok SM et al. 54 patients, the recognition rate of monosyllabic words at 0.25-8 kHz at 65 dB SPL averaged 30% without hearing aids, 44% with hearing aids (p<0.05), and increased to 57% with VSBs (p<0.05, compared to hearing aids), and the pure tone air conduction threshold gain with VSBs (pure tone air conduction threshold with and without VSBs) had an increase with frequency. ) tended to be better with increasing frequency, with average gains of 20.9 dB, 20.5 dB, 23.8 dB, 30.2 dB, 36.1 dB, 37.6 dB and 37.9 dB at 0.5 kHz, 1 kHz, 2 kHz, 3 kHz, 4 kHz, 6 kHz and 8 kHz, respectively[2] . We believe that this may be related to the fact that the MFT vibration site is close to the oval or garden window, in the bottom turn of the cochlea, which is a high frequency distribution area of the basilar membrane, and there is energy loss during the transmission of vibration to the cochlea roof (low frequency region), so the gain is poorer for low frequencies compared to high frequencies. Figure 1 shows the range of pure tone air conduction thresholds for those with moderate to severe sensorineural deafness bilaterally (courtesy of Med-le).