Three year experience with the cochlear BAHA attract implant: a systematic review of the literature

Background Bone conduction devices are widely used and indicated in cases of conductive, mixed or single sided deafness where conventional hearing aids are not indicated or tolerated. Percutaneous bone-conduction devices gave satisfactory hearing outcomes but were frequently complicated by soft tissue reactions. Transcutaneous bone conduction devices were developed in order to address some of the issues related to the skin-penetrating abutment. The aim of this article is to present a systematic review of the indications, surgical technique and audiological, clinical and functional outcomes of the BAHA Attract device reported so far. Methods A systematic computer-based literature search was performed on the PubMed database as well as Scopus, Cochrane and Google Scholar. Out of 497 articles, 10 studies and 89 reported cases were finally included in our review. Results The vast majority of implanted patients were satisfied with the aesthetics of the device scoring highly at the Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit, Glasgow Benefit Inventory and Client Oriented Scale of Improvement. Overall, hearing outcomes, tested by various means including speech in noise, free field hearing testing and word discrimination scores showed a significant improvement. Complications included seroma or haematoma formation, numbness around the area of the flap, swelling and detachment of the sound processor from the external magnet. Conclusions The functional and audiological results presented so far in the literature have been satisfactory and the complication rate is low compared to the skin penetrating Bone Conduction Devices. Further robust trials will be needed to study the long-term outcomes and any adverse effects

Benchmarking Social Justice Allegiance of Dismissal Protections among the EE5 Countries

The primary motivation for this paper is the quest for social justice in employment protection. This paper presents a method for the scientific assessment, measurement, comparison and benchmarking of social justice allegiance in employment protection generally, and dismissal protection specifically. A generic social justice framework is propositioned which framework is customised in terms of employment protection. We argue that this framework promotes the development of social justice indicators that cumulatively reveals an instrument in the form of a tangible score-card, capable of measuring and comparing social justice allegiance inherent to dismissal protections. This Social justice score-card is applied to the current statutory dismissal protections of the EE5 countries. Jointly, the five score-cards represent a scientific social justice index. The results of this research paper show that all five jurisdictions suggest some measure of allegiance to social justice. Comparatively, in order of strongest to weakest social justice allegiance, the EE5 jurisdictions are ranked as follows: South Africa, India, Indonesia, China, and Brazil.http://www.euppublishing.com/journal/ajiclhb2016Human Resource Managemen