Single-sided Deafness

In some patients, hear­ing loss devel­ops in only one ear, often with a very sud­den onset, while the oppo­site ear con­tin­ues to be able to hear sound nor­mal­ly. This type of hear­ing loss can lead to prob­lems with detect­ing con­ver­sa­tion on the side of the poor ear as well as under­stand­ing speech in loud envi­ron­ments. Ill­ness, expo­sure to sud­den loud nois­es or trau­mat­ic injuries to the ear may be the cause for this type of hear­ing loss. For­tu­nate­ly, there are both sur­gi­cal and non-sur­gi­cal options for address­ing the com­mu­ni­ca­tion dif­fi­cul­ties with this type of hear­ing loss.

New onset of sin­gle-sided hear­ing loss always neces­si­tates an eval­u­a­tion with our oto­laryn­gol­o­gy team. Fol­low­ing this con­sul­ta­tion, an appoint­ment may be sched­uled with an audi­ol­o­gist to explore options that may ease your com­mu­ni­ca­tion chal­lenges including: 

• Sur­gi­cal Pro­ce­dure: BAHA System
• Non-Sur­gi­cal Pro­ce­dure: Con­tralat­er­al Rout­ing of Sig­nal Hear­ing Aids (BI-CROS)