Living with good hearing in one ear and little or none in the other is more disruptive than people expect. Single-sided deafness, or SSD, affects an estimated 0.14 percent of US adults, about 350,000 people, and it makes conversation in groups exhausting, hides sound coming from the weaker side, and blurs your sense of where sound is coming from. The encouraging news is that several technologies can help, and the right one depends on your goals.
When the affected ear has too little usable hearing, simply amplifying sound into it does not work; the result is distortion rather than clarity. That is why SSD calls for a different approach: either routing sound to your good ear, or restoring input to the deaf ear directly.
A CROS system (Contralateral Routing of Signal) places a small microphone on your deaf side and wirelessly sends that sound to a receiver worn on your good ear. It does not restore hearing to the deaf ear, but it means you no longer miss the person seated on your weaker side. A BiCROS system does the same and also amplifies the better ear, for people whose good ear has some hearing loss of its own.
CROS is non-surgical, can often be fitted within a visit or two, and is an excellent first step. It helps most when someone is speaking from your deaf side, though it offers less benefit when the noise is on that side instead. Because it is low-risk and reversible, insurers often want a CROS trial before approving surgery.
Bone-anchored hearing systems route sound from the deaf side to the inner ear through bone vibration rather than through the ear canal. They can be previewed non-surgically on a softband before you commit, and the implanted version involves a minor procedure. They are a good fit for certain ear-canal or chronic-infection situations.
Unlike routing devices, a cochlear implant stimulates the hearing nerve in the deaf ear directly, giving the brain true input from that side again. For suitable candidates this can improve understanding in noise, restore a sense of direction, and for many people reduce tinnitus. The US FDA approved cochlear implantation for single-sided deafness in 2019. It is a surgical option and requires an intact hearing nerve, so candidacy is evaluated carefully.
The sensible path for most people is to start with a thorough evaluation and, where appropriate, a CROS or BiCROS trial, because it is quick, non-surgical, and tells you a great deal about how much routing alone helps. If routing is not enough and you want true two-ear hearing, a bone-anchored device or cochlear implant evaluation is the next step.
At Pinnacle Audiology we evaluate single-sided deafness thoroughly, fit and fine-tune CROS and BiCROS systems, and coordinate with implant centers when a surgical option is the better path. If one ear has checked out, we can help you map the options that fit your life.
When one ear has little or no usable hearing, sound coming from that side gets lost, and noise on your good side easily drowns out speech. A CROS system solves this with two devices: a transmitter worn on the unaidable ear picks up sound and wirelessly sends it to a receiver on your better ear, so you hear from both sides through the ear that works. A BiCROS does the same but also amplifies the better ear when it has some hearing loss of its own. Either way, you stop missing conversations happening on your weak side.
CROS is not the only option. For some people, a bone-anchored hearing solution routes sound through the skull to the working inner ear, and for certain medical causes a cochlear implant on the deaf ear can restore true two-sided hearing. The right choice depends on why the ear lost hearing, how the other ear is doing, and how you spend your day. That is a conversation for an evaluation, not a catalog.
Single-sided hearing is hardest exactly where the city lives: restaurants, meetings, subways, and crowded rooms where you cannot simply turn your good ear toward every speaker. Restoring input from both sides makes locating sound and following speech in noise dramatically easier. We fit and fine-tune CROS and BiCROS systems and coordinate with implant centers when that is the better route. Our hearing aids page covers the technology we carry.
Related topics: single-sided deafness NYC, CROS hearing aid New York, BiCROS hearing aids, cochlear implant single-sided deafness, unilateral hearing loss treatment, bone anchored hearing aid, audiologist NYC, Pinnacle Audiology, hearing care Garden City Long Island.
Comprehensive evaluation, honest guidance, and long-term support, from New York's leading independent audiology practice.