Results of cochlear implant reinsertion

Cochlear Implant Failures and Revision

“…The addition of undocumented or ''soft'' failures increases the overall failure rate to 3.4% among 720 Nucleus recipients and 5.4% among 129 Advanced Bionics device recipients. These rates, although lower than the rate reported in many series from other institutions (2)(3)(4)(5)(6)8), exceed the devicespecific failure rate reported by the manufacturers of commercially available implants. For example, the 3.4% rate among Nucleus patients is greater than the 0.2% to 2.4% reported by the device manufacturer (13).…”

“…Early experience with revision surgery for device failure or technology upgrades suggested that the surgical aspects were straightforward in most cases (1)(2). A histologic study in the macaque monkey demonstrated that reimplantation did not seem to affect the degree of new bone formation in the basal turn, but electrode insertion trauma was more common in the reimplanted ears (12).…”

“…In 1989, Gantz et al (1) performed reimplantation using multichannel devices on five patients with good hearing results. A 1991 report by Parisier et al (2) described an overall implant failure rate of 11% from a multicenter survey of 1175 implant recipients. They later described population-specific failure rates with regard to the Nucleus Mini 22 device, finding a 2% rate of failure in adults and a 14.9% failure rate in children (3).…”

Reoperations After Cochlear Implantation

“…Usually bothexplantation and implantation are performed at the same time, but if for some reason reimplantation has to be postponed, the intracochlear electrode should be cut at the round window to maintain cochlear patency (5). On the basis of accumulated experience from various teams (4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9) it seems that reimplantation with a multichannel intracochlear implant is a relatively safe manoeuvre under most circumstances. Of course, attention must be paid to careful surgical techniques, because forceful attempts to insert an electrode may damage delicate structures of the cochlea, with subsequent loss of residual hearing and vestibular function, not to speak of the injury of the neural population of the ganglion cells (10).…”

Radiologic Examinations in Human Temporal Bone Specimens Using Digital Volume Tomography and High-Resolution Computed Tomography After Implantation of Middle Ear Prosthesis and Cochlear Implant Electrode Array

“…In 1991, Parisier et al (1) reported an overall implant failure rate of 11% in a multicenter study. In 2005, Lassig et al (2) reported an institutional device failure rate of 3.7%.…”