Patients with single-sided deafness (or unilateral hearing) face real challenges in a variety of everyday situations. Decreased awareness and audibility of sound from the deaf side results in an inability to determine the direction of sounds.

CROS devices (or BiCROS devices for patients who need additional amplification on the better ear) pick up the sound arriving at one side of the head and feed it to the opposite ear. This allows the individual to receive sounds from both sides of the head in the “good” ear.