Anyone have experience with bone-anchored hearing aids?

[RocketSurgeon]

Hi, I'm pretty close to wrapping up the trial period for some hearing aids to address some mild hearing loss and I'm pretty unimpressed. I've had a consultation and been told that bone-anchored hearing aids are an option for me, and given the nature of my hearing loss probably better. Of course, this requires surgery and there's no trial period this time! So I was wondering if anyone else here had experience with one and how they felt about it. Thank you!

[Dee18]

I have a friend who has one, but he had major hearing loss.  He said it works well now but took months of therapy.  I was curious about this as I have increasing hearing loss and am probably headed toward a cochlear implant.  My ENT's audiologist advised me to keep going with the hearing aids as long as possible, as people often find the sound unnatural with a cochlear implant.

In reading about bone-anchored hearing aids I came across this passage on the Oticon.com site:

"Can I try bone conduction hearing without the surgery?
Yes, you can try a bone conduction sound processor like the Ponto on a softband or headband. You wear the sound processor on a band around your head so that vibrations can be transferred through the skin to the skull bone. This lets you try out this type of hearing solution without an implant."

You might want to try that.

[RocketSurgeon]

They did let me try the headband thing in office but it'd didn't occur to me to ask if I could take it out of the office and try it elsewhere. In any case, I had some positive experiences with the in-ear hearing aids this weekend so I'm leaning towards keeping them. (I really don't want the BAHA surgery.) Thank you!

[zurberts]

I work within the hearing aid industry. The bone anchored hearing aid (BAHA) devices are effective because they bypass the middle ear where you have acoustic hearing loss (hearing aids amplify but if there is enough damage, it won't always be enough. The BAHA is the level up but just below a cochlear implant where they go directly into the auditory nerve with a series of electrodes. It basically vibrates through your skull by mechanical vibrations.

Now, if you aren't ready to go the BAHA route yet, you could try an open ear set of headphones like these Aftershokz - link here: https://shokz.com/. I have "relatively" normal hearing for my age and find they are a great experience since you can hear the audio from your phone or whatever it is connected to and it doesn't plug your ear. That will give you a similar experience without having to go through the surgery to try it out. It won't have the ability to customize for your hearing loss but it is a step in that direction. If you wear glasses like those from Nuance (I  haven't tried this brand but have tried ones with a mechanical actator inside the arm band and work similarly to the BAHA devices). Here is a review so you get an idea:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/i-tested-smart-glasses-with-built-in-hearing-aids-for-a-week-and-didnt-want-to-take-them-off/.

Good luck and I'm happy to answer any questions you have.

[zurberts]

here is another device to consider that is a stick on rather than needing surgery that you may be interested in:

https://www.medel.com/en-gb/hearing-solutions/bone-conduction-system