How Audiologists Can Treat Single Sided Deafness

Single sided deafness is more common than most people would estimate.  It can be due to a lot of different factors.  Although hearing in the better ear may be normal, signle sided deafness can still cause a great deal of difficulty for in hearing, understanding, and communicating in noisy environments.

As the term is used here, single sided deafness means that there is a hearing loss in one ear that is so severe, devices such as conventional hearing aids or cochlear implants would not be options in overcoming the hearing loss in that ear.  However, there is a special form of hearing aid device that can.  Known as a CROS (stands for Contralateral Routing of Signal) hearing instrument, this hearing device positions a microphone near the deafened ear, but "routes" that microphone signal over to the opposite side of the head.  With this type of system in place, the wearer hears normally with their better ear, but also hears the sounds that normally reach the deafened side of their head in the better ear as well.  With this type of listening device, sounds originating on the deafened side of the hearing impaired person are still heard, although they are heard with the better ear. 

Although this sounds like an unusual form of listening, patients who have single sided deafness do find hearing all of the sounds around them is valuable.  With just a little listening practice, they can even distinguish where sound is likely coming from based on its sound quality.  And, CROS instruments can route the signal from one ear to another wirelessly.  For this unique population of individuals, the CROS instrument is a "sound" solution.