gms | German Medical Science

Objective: This study is designed to test the possibility for preservation of residual hearing in pediatric patients by means of “soft surgery” and standard electrode arrays with full length insertions.

Material and methods: 14 profoundly hearing impaired children with some residual hearing who underwent cochlear implantation using a modified “soft surgery” protocol at the ENT clinic of MMA – Sofia. For our study we defined functional residual hearing as at least one threshold better than or equal to 75dB HL at 250, 500, or 1000Hz. Pre-implant and post-implant pure tone thresholds and pure tone average (PTA) were calculated from unaided audiograms for 250, 500, and 1000Hz. Hearing preservation was determined as average loss of less than 20dB for the 3 tested frequencies.

Results: Complete hearing preservation was achieved in 6/14 patients (42.8%), while 8/14 (57.2%) had worse preservation or no response at the limits of the audiometer. The pre- to post-operative low frequency PTA had a mean reduction of 16.5dB.

Conclusion: Preservation of residual hearing in pediatric cochlear implant patients using standard length electrode arrays with full insertions is possible when using the“Soft surgery” technique proposed by Lehnhardt. The residual hearing is very important for the use of electroacoustic stimulation.

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