123 4.2 Longitudinal study of use of ADHEAR Some children required hair to be shaved in the post auricular region for the adhesive adaptors to be optimally positioned. This was predominantly children with microtia where the hair line was very low. Minor skin redness was reported in 8 individuals which resolved overnight once the adhesive pad had been removed. No stability issues were reported from any patient, however interference with both the adhesive pad and device was reported with headscarf and hat use. 4. Discussion Literature review of PUBMED, Cochrane Library and NHS Athens was conducted. To the authors’ knowledge there have been no previous published longitudinal studies into long term application and continued use of the adhesive bone conducting device, it also provides data on the biggest consecutive cohort published from a single center. The excellent long-term compliance rate of 87.8% is similar to 80% demonstrated by Neumann et al. [4] when compared to conventional bone conducting systems. This retention rate is likely to represent the high levels of patient satisfaction, substantiated by numerous studies which indicate statistically significant improvements in quality of life indicators when using the adhesive retained hearing aid system. These include system-specific quality of life questionnaire (SSQ12), AQoL-8D [1,5,10,11], LAS and GCBI. Most improvement is demonstrated in learning and emotion dimensions [3). Improved compliance with the adhesive device may also reflect the improved audiological outcomes compared to the unaided condition [1, 2) and comparable audiological outcomes as compared to softband mounted bone conduction device [3-5,10], passive magnetic devices (Baha® Attract) [6) and CROS aids in single sided deafness [7]. However, is should be noted that these studies were carried out on small sample size (mean 11 patients) with the exception of Osborne et al. [3] who included 21 children and demonstrated an improvement in thresholds of 7.3 dB HL (p = 0.0001) over those recorded in soft band aids and Urik et al [2] who demonstrating improved thresholds in both as compared to the unaided condition in 17 patients. The improved quality of life most likely reflected the fact that the patients are more accepting of the aesthetics of the adhesive adaptor and were happy to wear their hearing system for twice as long [10] and in more situations than their previous softband. Many children report softband use only during their time at school.
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