United Kingdom national paediatric bilateral project: Results of professional rating scales and parent questionnaires

Abstract

Data from 78% of paediatric cochlear implant centres in the United Kingdom provide a real-world picture of outcomes of children with bilateral implants in the UK. This large reference data set can be used to identify children in the lower quartile for targeted intervention.

Auditory Attention and Spatial Unmasking in Children With Cochlear Implants

“…In addition, interimplant delays may also have an effect. Cullington et al. (2017) found that children with BiCIs who were implanted with the second CI sooner had a larger improvement in speech understanding in noise compared with children who had longer delays between their first and second CIs.…”

“…Today, many children who are deaf receive BiCIs, in part, to help overcome difficulties associated with listening in noisy environments. Although multiple studies show improvement on spatial hearing tasks for children with BiCIs versus children with unilateral CIs ( Bennett & Litovsky, 2020 ; Cullington et al., 2017 ; Galvin et al., 2007 ; Grieco-Calub & Litovsky, 2010 , 2012 ; Litovsky et al., 2004 ; Murphy et al., 2011 ; Reeder et al., 2017 ; Suneel et al., 2020 ; Zheng et al., 2015 ), there are still notable gaps in performance between children with BiCIs and children with NH. When target speech and interfering speech are spatially separated, children with BiCIs typically demonstrate smaller benefits (i.e., spatial unmasking) compared with NH peers who are matched for either chronological age or for number of years of auditory experience ( Hess et al., 2018 ; Misurelli & Litovsky, 2012 , 2015 ).…”

Sound Localization in Toddlers with Normal Hearing and with Bilateral Cochlear Implants Revealed Through a Novel “Reaching for Sound” Task

“…Developmental studies on sound localization have primarily used closed-set response options with loudspeakers positioned along an arc in the frontal hemifield. The increments separating loudspeakers vary across studies, being as small as 10-15°in some (e.g., Grieco-Calub and Litovsky, 2010;Zheng et al, 2015;Dorman et al, 2016) and as large as 45° (Cullington et al, 2017). Behavioral measures include overt pointing or computer games requiring children to select options that indicate perceived location of a sound source.…”

“…Several studies in children with BiCIs have shown that the ability to discriminate sound location (left versus right) is indeed better when listening with two implants compared with only a single implant (Litovsky et al, 2006a;Grieco-Calub and Litovsky, 2010;Dorman et al, 2016). In addition, sound localization errors are smaller with two implants versus a single implant (e.g., Grieco-Calub and Litovsky, 2010;Cullington et al, 2017). These abilities have been shown to improve with bilateral hearing experience (e.g., Godar and Litovsky, 2010;Zheng et al, 2015).…”

“…A common thread in studies with bilaterally implanted children is that regardless of the delay in implantation between the ears, they generally perform more poorly than NH peers Grieco-Calub and Litovsky, 2010;Misurelli and Litovsky, 2012;2015;Zheng et al, 2015;Dorman et al, 2016;Cullington et al, 2017;Reeder et al, 2017). A notable feature in previous studies is that children were aged four years or older, and in many cases, their hearing was not bilaterally activated until age three years or older.…”