Performance over time of adult patients using the Ineraid or Nucleus cochlear implant

Abstract

This study examined the average and individual performance over time of 49 adult cochlear implant subjects. Subjects were randomly assigned to receive either the Ineraid cochlear implant, with analog processing, or the Nucleus cochlear implant, with feature-extraction processing. All subjects had postlingual profound bilateral sensorineural hearing loss and received no significant benefit from hearing aids before implantation. Group data were examined in two ways. First, only subjects who had complete data over the test period were examined. Second, an analysis of all available data was carried out by mixed linear-model analysis. In this analysis, to account for missed follow-ups at the planned intervals, data consisting of the observations closest in time to the planned test times were modeled by natural splines with knots at the planned follow-up times. Contrasts between all pairs of planned follow-up times for each device were tested, as were contrasts between devices at each planned follow-up time. Results indicated little difference between the performance of the Ineraid and Nucleus subjects in their level of performance or their rate of learning. Postimplantation performance was typically superior to preimplantation performance within 9 months, and continued to improve up to 18-30 months depending on the speech perception measure. In some subjects, improvements in speech perception measures were observed up to four or five years postimplantation. There was also evidence that three subjects had a decrement in overall speech perception performance, although their postimplantation scores were always higher than their preimplantation scores. In at least one subjects this was likely a result of age-related cognition decrements.

Evidence that cochlear-implanted deaf patients are better multisensory integrators

“…The present data confirm that a profound hearing loss induces the acquisition of strong speechreading abilities (6,19,24,25), but they represent the first evidence that this skill remains unaffected by the recovery of the auditory functions provided by the neuroprosthesis. CI patients preserve a striking speechreading ability acquired during the period of deafness while they have reached optimal auditory recognition.…”

Interactions of speaking condition and auditory feedback on vowel production in postlingually deaf adults with cochlear implants

“…When feedback is restored, the speaker's task is first to retune the auditory feedback control subsystem, by re-defining auditory targets and relearning corrective mechanisms. As reported in previous studies, new implant users characteristically have low scores on word recognition tests ͑see Tyler et al, 1997͒. As their acuity for discriminating those sounds improves with prosthesis use, they can relearn auditory goals for their speech as well as new mappings between auditory errors and the changes in speech movements that will correct them. As auditory feedback becomes more accurate, the speaker is able to use corrective motor commands based on that auditory feedback to recalibrate the feedforward commands.…”

Environmental sound perception of cochlear implant users

“…American clinical trial' (Balkany et al, 2007), 'The Cochlear Implant Clinic of the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital' in Melbourne Australia (Dowell, Hollow, & Winton, 2003;Flynn, Dowell, & Clark, 1998); 'The Midland Cochlear Implant Programme' in the UK (Proops et al, 1999); 'The Vienna Cochlear Implant Programme' in Austria (Hamzavi, Franz, Baumgartner, & Gstoettner, 2001); 'The University of Iowa CI Program' in the US (Tyler, Parkinson, Woodworth, Lowder, & Gantz, 1997); and 'The CI centre' in Nijmegen in the Netherlands (van Dijk et al, 1999). This current study provides results for adult CI recipients from the Southern Cochlear Implant Programme (SCIP), New Zealand, for the perception of speech in both quiet and noise.…”