Subjective and objective benefit of cochlea implantation in patients with postlingual single-sided deafness.

Even though cochlea implantation is a method of choice in adult SSD subjects, the results are quite heterogeneous. The aim of the study was to evaluate speech understanding, hearing effort and quality of life in 50 postlingual deaf SSD CI subjects.

50 adults aged 51 ( ± 12.6) years with a CI-experience of 6 to 96 months were included. Subjective benefit was assessed using the SSQ and a specially designed questionnaire, the perceived hearing effort by the Hearing Effort–International Questionnaire , monosyllabic and multisyllabic speech understanding in quiet at 65 dB and 80dB by the Freiburger as well as speech understanding in noise by the Oldenburger Sentence Test (OLSA) in S0N0, S0Nssd, SssdNnh with and without speech processor.

An improvement was reported with regard to speech understanding and localization in the SSQ questionnaire (p < 0,001), but not with regard to the quality of hearing (p=0,053). Furthermore, patients reported about a reduction in hearing effort due to the CI (p < 0,001, mean score of 3.4 with CI, of 4.28 without CI). Overall, the mean satisfaction was high (8.5 ( ± 1.7) out of 10 points at maximum). The speech processor was used 12 ( ± 3.6) h/d. Monosyllabic speech understanding in quiet was 46.9 ( ± 23)  %  at 65dB and 57.6 ( ± 26)  %  at 80dB. In noise speech understanding showed a significant improvement for the SssdNnh (p < 0.001). However, five patients had no significant audiometric benefit although the subjects rated the benefit as high (8.4 out of 10 points).

The majority of patients benefit from CI in terms of speech understanding, directional hearing, quality of life and reduction of listening effort. No predictive factor with regard to the postoperative outcome could be detected.

Poster-PDF A-1186.pdf

Publication History

Article published online:
13 May 2021