Introduction: Avoidance of infection at the implant site is a crucial element to the success of bone-anchored hearing aid (BAHA) implantation. However, little evidence exists to suggest the best post-operative wound dressing to use.

Material and methods: We report our experience with 160 consecutive BAHA patients, using four types of post-operative BAHA wound dressing (Tri-adcortyl®, Mepitel®, Allevyn®, and Acticoat 7® with Allevyn). Patients were reviewed at week one and week two post-operatively. Infection was defined as a positive wound swab culture or evidence of cellulitis at the BAHA site.

Results: Post-operative BAHA infection rates were 16 per cent, 50 per cent, 10 per cent and 5 per cent, for each of the four dressings respectively, and the mean number of additional visits to wound care clinic were 1.5, 3.7, one and 0.4, respectively.

Discussion: Acticoat 7 with Allevyn produced the lowest infection rate and thus became the dressing of choice for our BAHA programme.