Artikel
Evaluation of speech perception results in cochlear implant patients from 1984 till today
Entwicklung der Sprachtestergebnisse von Cochlear Implant-Patienten von 1984 bis heute
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Veröffentlicht: | 7. September 2006 |
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From the beginning of the Hannover Cochlear Implant (CI) Program in 1984 until today more than 2600 patients have been provided with a CI. For analysis of speech perception development a homogeneous group of 864 patients was selected by: age > 18 years, native German speaker, no special implants like Double Array or ABI, no additional handicaps and only monoral implantation. These 864 patients have been divided in 5 subgroups by time of implantation. Regrouping was done depending on the introduction of new implant technologies. The oldest group contains only Nucleus 22 users while the latest group consists of Nucleus, Advanced Bionics and MedEl users.
Patients were seen 3, 6 and 12 month after implantation, then once every year and after 5 years every second year. Ths speech perception test battery did change over time, but the tests for Speech Tracking and Monosyllables in auditory only condition were used over the complete period since 1984.
Patients of the most recent group performed significantly better than those of the first group. In all groups an increase in speech perception over time could be seen.
For each group performance classes of poor, medium and good user have been defined by use of mean values and standard deviations. Poor performers of the most recent group (19.1%) had Speech Tracking results below 23.7 words/min at 3 years after implantation while the good performers (18.2%) reach values above 70.5 words/min (Figure 1 [Fig. 1]).
Classification of patients is stable over time. 80.6 % of the patients have 3 years after implantation the same performance class as 6 month after implantation.