A systematic review on skin complications of bone-anchored hearing aids in relation to surgical techniques.

A systematic review to study the skin complications associated with the bone-anchored hearing aid in relation to surgical techniques. The following databases have been searched: MEDLINE, EMBASE, the Cochrane Library , Google scholar and the PubMed. The literature search date was from January 1977 until November 2013. Randomised controlled trials and retrospective studies were included. Initial search identified 420 publications. Thirty articles met the inclusion criteria of this review. The most common surgical techniques identified were full-thickness skin graft, Dermatome and linear incision techniques. The result shows that dermatome technique is associated with higher rate of skin complications when compared to linear incision and skin graft techniques. Based on the available literature, the use of a linear incision technique appears to be associated with lower skin complications; however, there is limited data available supporting this. Higher quality studies would allow a more reliable comparison between the surgical techniques.