Longitudinal follow-up Evaluation of Cochlea Implant Rehabilitation at Cochlear Implant Center CIC Schleswig-Kiel

I: The Cochlea Implant (Cl) supply is the method of choice for rehabilitation of post-lingual deaf patients. Better hearing and good speech intelligibility is expected. In fact is the real benefit of a CI quite variable caused by a lot of predictors. The evaluation of the effectiveness of the cochlear implant rehabilitation programme should be evaluated for a long period of time.

M: In a retrospective study success of CI-rehabilitation has been evaluated of all post-lingually deaf or severe hearing impairment patients (n = 265; age: 6 – 95J.), who received a CI at ENT-hospital, University Kiel, regardless of genesis, diagnosis and comorbidity. The post-operative audiological after-care has been analysed during 10/2011 to 11/2015. The success of rehabilitation has been evaluated with the Kiel-CI-Profiles for adults from first fit to 7 years. Speech intelligibility in quiet using Freiburg monosyllable test has been evaluated at 50, 60, 70 und 80 dB and in noise of 65 dB with the adaptive Oldenburg sentence test. After first fit all tests took place after 1, 3, 6, 9 month, 1, 1,5, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 years.

R: In median the speech intelligibility at 70 dB of the CI receivers score 60% after 1 m., 70% after 6 m., 75% after 1 y. and 3 y. and 80% after 6 y. All patients who received a CI gain in speech intelligibility in quiet and in noise in comparison to pre-operative measurements with best-fitted hearing aids.

C: This paper shows the clear benefit of rehabilitation with a cochlear implant of patients suffering from post-lingually deafness, profound hearing loss, and severe hearing impairment or with residual hearing deaf or patients. Even after several years an improvement in speech intelligibility is possible.

Publication History

Publication Date:
18 April 2018 (online)