BAHA (Bone-Anchored Hearing Aid)

The Bone-Anchored Hearing Aid, or BAHA, is another implantable device made to help with certain kinds of hearing loss. Your surgeon inserts a small abutment into your mastoid (the hard part of your skull right behind your ear). Your bone then grows into and around the abutment, securing it in place through the process called osseointegration. The hearing aid attaches to the abutment and transfers sound to your ear by vibrating. You can find more information below, by calling us, or request a free guide from Cochlear Americas on their website.

Other Wearing Options

An abutment usually provides the best sound quality for BAHA, but there are other wearing options available to you. You can have a magnet surgically inserted (called the BAHA Attract) if you don’t like the look of the abutment. There are also non-surgical options from Cochlear if you want the benefits of the BAHA without the surgery.

The SoundArc is the newest non-surgical option available from Cochlear. Its stylish design provides better sound quality than conventional softband. It uses silicone grips for a soft, comfortable, and secure fit. And you can get it in a range of colors to suit your hair, mood, or clothes.

Candidate Criteria

When you can lose hearing due to a problem in the outer or middle ear, this is called a conductive hearing loss. It essentially means that sound is not getting in to your ear the way it’s supposed to. Usually a conductive hearing loss can be fixed with medication or surgery. But if your conductive hearing loss is chronic, BAHA can help minimize its impact on your ability to communicate. When you have both a conductive hearing loss and damage to the inner ear (known as sensorineural hearing loss), it’s called a mixed hearing loss. Depending on the severity of the sensorineural component, BAHA may be able to help you with your mixed hearing loss as well.

You can also use BAHA to help with single-sided deafness. If you are unable to hear in just one ear, we can use the BAHA to transmit sound across your skull to your better ear. This allows you to hear sound on both sides again, like going from mono back to stereo.