SAN ANTONIO -- The newest device on the market for the hearing impaired doesn’t use the ear canal to transmit sound. It uses teeth.
Ear Medical Group in San Antonio is the first clinic in Texas to offer this new technology.
Mary Peters works at the University of Texas at San Antonio's downtown campus, helping with small business development. She’s happy to be back to hearing the world around her in stereo after a medical crisis caused sudden one-sided hearing loss.
Last April, doctors removed a benign tumor called an acoustic neuroma from Peters’s head. She was left without any hearing on her right side.
“It’s overwhelming because everything sounds a little loud and kind of funneled into the ear that you do hear with,” Peters explained. “And then you just miss a lot.”
Peters was recently fitted for a new device called the SoundBite. It uses a device that looks like a hearing aid with a microphone on the end. That transmits a wireless signal to a device that looks like a tiny retainer or a bridge worn in the mouth.
“And it sends an imperceptible vibration so you don’t feel it at all,” said neurotologist Dr. Susan Kind. “It sends a signal through the hard bone of your teeth and your skull to the inner ear that works normally.”
The medical term for it is “bone conduction.” The vibrations travel through the teeth and jawbone to the cochlea, bypassing the middle and outer ear entirely and restoring the perception of hearing in the impaired ear.
“It is very much like the difference between listening to an AM station and then having the full robust sound of FM all of a sudden,” Peters stated.
Ear Medical Group, 21 Spurs Lane, is the first in Texas to fit patients with the SoundBite. It was cleared by the FDA three months ago for patients 18 and older.
“I think this is a great addition to what we have to offer for one-sided hearing loss,” King said.
For patients like Peters, who did not want a surgical approach, SoundBite is a welcome innovation.
“I’m very excited,” Peters said. “I think it’s going to do wonders for my quality of life.”
It’s still unclear how much the SoundBite technology will cost and if that cost will be covered by insurance. But doctors say there’s no doubt it’s technology that will change some lives.
