Contralateral routing of signals in unilateral hearing impairment. A better method of fitting.

Unilaterally severely hearing impaired persons, who may experience substantial communication problems in situations of high acoustic demands, would in theory benefit from contralateral routing of signals (CROS). However, reports of failure because of too much disturbing noise and distortion have been common. The reason for a low success rate in CROS, though, is an inappropriate fitting procedure, due to lack of understanding of the basic principle of CROS among both patients and audiologists. The precondition for success in CROS is an accurate description of the individual hearing deficit and a correctly balanced adjustment of the CROS aid through testing under sound field conditions, combined with a comprehensive follow-up.