Early language development after bilateral cochlear implantation

Early bilateral cochlear implantation (CI) enables language comparable to hearing children. In postoperative care it is necessary to distinguish between children with an appropriate development and those who need additional support. The results in the german Language Acquisition Test for Two-Year-Old Children (SETK 2) of 97 children, cochlear implanted within the first two years of life, simultaneously bilaterally or sequentially bilaterally with a maximum interval of 6 months were compared with those of the hearing standardization group. The retrospective analysis only includes children with German as first language, without additional developmental difficulties and cochlear implanted more than 12 months at the time of testing. On average, children after CI show comparably good T-values in word comprehension (V1) = 50.26 and production (P1) = 45.95 as well as sentence comprehension (V2) = 44.43 and production (P2) = 38.34 as the standardization group. For the cochlear implanted children we found significant correlations between hearing age and the results in all four subtests. Children with results in SETK 2 below the average should intensively observed because they may need additional support. The observation period has be extended to prove the prognostic relevance.

Publication History

Article published online:
12 May 2023