Correction of congenital unilateral aural atresia: Does it make a difference?

摘要

Objective. The ability to detect a signal in noise and the ability to localize sound were measured in participants with congenital unilateral aural atresia before and after surgical repair to determine if restoring hearing in an atretic ear improved binaural processing. Relationships between the outcomes and important covariates such as age and surgical success were examined. The participants (ages 5-53) had an average conductive hearing loss of 64 dB HL in their atretic ear. Methods. Patients' ability to repeat sentences in noise and to localize sound in quiet and in noise were tested before and again one month after surgical reconstruction of a natural sound-conducting pathway of their atretic ear.;Results. Hearing in the atretic ear was improved an average of 34 dB following surgery. Tests of sound localization and hearing in noise resulted in significant improvement after surgery in the condition where noise was directed to the non-atretic ear. The ability to hear speech in noise is a complex function of age (with some evidence of an effect of surgical success), but trends varied depending on the location of the background noise relative to speech.;Conclusions. Because localization and hearing in noise improved under the condition with noise to the normal ear, results suggest that patients were able to take significant advantage of the increased signal arriving to the repaired atretic ear. The addition of improved auditory perception to the surgically repaired ear appears to involve a cognitive load that may be similar to the process of multitasking.