Prognosticating Speech Performance in Multichannel Cochlear Implant Patients

Abstract
Twenty patients received multichannel cochlear implants between April 1984 and May 1986 at the University of Utah Medical Center. All patients have been followed for at least 1 year postimplant. Preimplant screening included audiometric testing, electronystagmogram (ENG), promontory stimulation, computed tomography (CT) scanning, and psychological evaluation. Based on postimplant audio-only CID sentence discrimination scores, these patients were divided into three groups: good (CID > 79%), Intermediate (CID, 21% to 79%), and poor (CID < 21%). Preimplant factors that correlated with CID scores were hearing loss duration, previous use of hearing aids, lip-reading ability, tinnitus, positive ENG calorics, preimplant pure-tone average, promontory stimulation threshold, and understanding of the project. Only previous hearing aid usage approached statistical significance (p = 0.05). A larger patient sample is needed to verify these results.

This publication has 3 references indexed in Scilit: