Yorkshire woman benefits from Transear hearing aid

Joyce Parker, 59, from Dewsbury, West Yorkshire had surgery to remove a vestibular schwanomma in her left ear four years ago. More commonly known as an acoustic neuroma, it is a benign growth on the vestibular nerve which causes hearing loss and balance problems.

It was two or three years prior to the surgery when Joyce first noticed her hearing wasn't as good. As she had previously had problems with catarrh, Joyce went to a chemist. When they advised to go to her GP she didn't think anything of it, and because she also owned a newsagent's with her husband, she found it difficult to find the time and so didn't go until later on.

A vestibular schwanomma is not very common and is generally slow growing so they may be monitored before treatment is undertaken. In Joyce's case surgery was advised straightaway because the growth was quite big. It had also started to make her feel quite poorly with dizziness as well as causing further hearing loss.

Although the majority of the tumour was removed, removing it completely would have left Joyce without the use of one side of her face due to its location near the facial nerve. As it was she was left with some facial paralysis and soon realised that the remaining hearing in her ear had gone.

She didn't think a single-sided hearing loss would be so bad, but afterwards found her confidence knocked. She couldn't hear in noisy environments, tell the direction that sound was coming from or hear people when they were on her left side, which was extremely frustrating.

Joyce wasn't initially offered a hearing aid but when she eventually saw an audiologist she was offered a bone anchored hearing aid (BAHA). However, because she felt she didn't want to undergo another operation, even if this time it would be less invasive, she opted for a bone conduction aid on a headband.

Now however Joyce has a type of bone conduction aid called a Transear which is available privately in the UK. The device doesn't require an operation but has one part worn behind the ear and another part worn deeply in the ear canal, which transmits vibrations through the ear canal bone to the hearing ear where sound is processed by the functioning cochlea.

It was Joyce's audiologist's first fitting of the device and although it took two impressions to create the mould for the part worn in the ear, she found it comfortable from the beginning.

She says: “I went to a tenpin bowling alley on three occasions. The first time I had no hearing aid, the second I had the aid on a headband and the third I had the Transear. The first time I couldn't hear conversation in such a noisy environment. It was a little better wearing the headband, but after two hours it was uncomfortable because it has to be worn tight. With the Transear however I could hear and it was comfortable. I could limit the background noise with the flick of a switch, this means it is helpful in various environments where there is a high level of background noise. Of course it isn't as good as normal hearing and one way it doesn't help is that I am unable to tell the direction of sound, but I am very pleased with it and I hope that it will become available on the NHS so that other people may benefit from it.”

As the Transear is a new product that has only been in the UK since early in 2009, a Deafness Research UK advisor suggests that it will only be available privately until there is enough scientific evidence to support it and the NHS then becomes prepared to fund it, but that may take between 3 to 5 years. However, the NHS does provide BAHAs for people who are prepared to undergo minor day surgery as this already has a lot of published medical literature showing benefit. Any patient considering a BAHA should first have a trial of a bone conducting device on a headband as not everyone with single sided deafness finds that they gain adequate benefit to want to go ahead.