A novel bone conduction implant (BCI): engineering aspects and pre-clinical studies.
Journal article, 2010
Percutaneous bone anchored hearing aids (BAHA) are today an important rehabilitation alternative for patients suffering from conductive or mixed hearing loss. Despite their success they are associated with drawbacks such as skin infections, accidental or spontaneous loss of the bone implant, and patient refusal for treatment due to stigma. A novel bone conduction implant (BCI) system has been proposed as an alternative to the BAHA system because it leaves the skin intact. Such a BCI system has now been developed and the encapsulated transducer uses a non-screw attachment to a hollow recess of the lateral portion of the temporal bone. The aim of this study is to describe the basic engineering principals and some preclinical results obtained with the new BCI system. Laser Doppler vibrometer measurements on three cadaver heads show that the new BCI system produces 0-10 dB higher maximum output acceleration level at the ipsilateral promontory relative to conventional ear-level BAHA at speech frequencies. At the contralateral promontory the maximum output acceleration level was considerably lower for the BCI than for the BAHA.
Male
sound
head
Prosthesis Design
Bone conduction
Female
Aged
methods
Prosthesis Implantation
anchored hearing-aid
Humans
implanted transducer
BAHA
Aged
Hearing Aids
80 and over
Bone Conduction
Author
Bo Håkansson
Chalmers, Signals and Systems, Signal Processing and Biomedical Engineering
Sabine Reinfeldt
Chalmers, Signals and Systems, Signal Processing and Biomedical Engineering
Måns Eeg-Olofsson
University of Gothenburg
Per Östli
Chalmers, Signals and Systems, Signal Processing and Biomedical Engineering
Hamidreza Taghavi
Chalmers, Signals and Systems, Signal Processing and Biomedical Engineering
Johannes N Adler
Chalmers, Signals and Systems
John Gabrielsson
Chalmers, Signals and Systems
Stefan Stenfelt
Chalmers, Signals and Systems, Signal Processing and Biomedical Engineering
Gösta Granström
University of Gothenburg
International Journal of Audiology
1499-2027 (ISSN) 1708-8186 (eISSN)
Vol. 49 3 203-15Subject Categories
Medical Laboratory and Measurements Technologies
Otorhinolaryngology
DOI
10.3109/14992020903264462
PubMed
20105095