A New Wide-Diameter Bone-Anchored Hearing Implant

In Reply: We would like to thank the authors of the letter concerning our manuscript “A New Wide-Diameter Bone-Anchored Hearing Implant: Prospective 1-Year Data on Complications, Implant Stability, and Survival” for pointing out relevant aspects of resonance frequency analysis (RFA). We agree with the conclusion that a consistent publication of RFA data is the way forward for establishing a basis for clinically relevant interpretation of RFA in Bone-Anchored Hearing Implantation. We would therefore like to thank the editor for allowing us to take this opportunity to show the data for both ISQ high (Fig. 1) and ISQ low values (Fig. 2) from our study. Please note that the average data for the 9-mm abutment length is an average of 3 patients only and should be interpreted with caution. As can be seen from the data, ISQ high and ISQ low tend to be similar, also on an individual level, albeit with an offset. The average difference between ISQ high and ISQ low in our study is 1.7 (SD, 1.46) with a range of 0 to 6. Our experience from Bone-Anchored Hearing Implants is that a small and consistent difference is generally the case. One could speculate that it is because of the relatively more homogenous skull bone, compared with the situation in dental implants. Nevertheless, we fully agree that it is important to develop the clinical guidelines for ISQ interpretation based on data across many studies and hope that our study can contribute to this endeavor.FIG. 1: ISQ high for individual patients and mean interindividual ISQ high for patients with 6-mm abutment (bold, solid line; n = 15) and 9-mm long abutment (bold, dashed line; n = 3).FIG. 2: ISQ low for individual patients and mean interindividual ISQ low for patients with 6-mm abutment (bold, solid line; n = 15) and 9-mm long abutment (bold, dashed line; n = 3). Søren Foghsgaard, M.D. Per Caye-Thomasen, M.D., D.M.Sc. Department of Otorhinolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery Copenhagen University Hospital Rigshospitalet Denmark Faculty of Health Sciences University of Copenhagen Denmark [email protected]