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76th Annual Meeting of the German Society of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, Head and Neck Surgery

German Society of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, Head and Neck Surgery

04.05. - 08.05.2005, Erfurt

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Speech understanding in noise using cochlear implants

Meeting Abstract

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  • corresponding author József G. Kiss - University of Szeged, Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, Szeged, Hungary
  • author Ferenc Tóth - University of Szeged, Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, Szeged, Hungary
  • author Alice Szamosközi - University of Szeged, Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, Szeged, Hungary
  • author Attila L. Nagy - University of Szeged, Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, Szeged, Hungary
  • author József Jóri - University of Szeged, Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, Szeged, Hungary

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Hals-Nasen-Ohren-Heilkunde, Kopf- und Hals-Chirurgie. 76. Jahresversammlung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Hals-Nasen-Ohren-Heilkunde, Kopf- und Hals-Chirurgie e.V.. Erfurt, 04.-08.05.2005. Düsseldorf, Köln: German Medical Science; 2005. Doc05hno571

The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.egms.de/en/meetings/hno2005/05hno023.shtml

Published: September 22, 2005

© 2005 Kiss et al.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en). You are free: to Share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work, provided the original author and source are credited.

Outline

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Everyday communication doesn't occur in a “sterile” environment, it is disturbed by many factors, such as noise, surrounding us. A hearing aid – and such a cochlear implant as well – must be programmed and fitted in a different manner when to be used in noisy or in a quiescent environment. That is why the control of speech understanding so important is.

The authors performed speech recognition tests on 15 cochlear implant users under different background noise conditions. The tests covered number, word, and sentence recognition tests.

The results showed that with intensifying background noise speech understanding worsened, still most of our cochlear implant users performed well in these circumstances. When fitting the speech processor, the primary goal should not be to reach the best pure tone threshold level, since it worsens the cochlear users' speech understanding performance in a noisy environment.