gms | German Medical Science

Introduction: Since 1984, the speech perception outcomes of the cochlear implant recipients provided at the Medizinische Hochschule Hannover have continuously increased.

Most of the postlingually deafened recipients have achieved good speech perception in quiet. In contrast, speech perception in noise is still difficult.

In the year 2000 the HSM sentence test 10dB S/N was introduced to evaluate the speech perception in noise.

Method: A homogenous group of 569 cochlear implant recipients, implanted from the year 2000 to 2008, was formed and the results in the HSM sentence test in noise were determined and evaluated.

Results: For half of the recipients, the HSM sentence test in quiet suffer from ceiling effects after one year. The presentation of further enhancement in speech perception has to be demonstrated by a sentence test in noise. From all recipients achieving in quiet between 90%–100%, after the first rehabilitation the two largest groups attain in noise between 10%–20% and 30%–40%. After one year the largest group arrives at 30%–40% and after 3 years at 60%–70% in noise. This presents that more and more cochlear implant recipients improved their speech perception in noise.

Discussion: Even it is still difficult, more and more recipients have achieved speech perception in noise over the time. The enhancement is due to a number of factors as advance of cochlear implant technology and speech coding strategies. Additionally to the objective results a comparison with the recipient’s daily experience in hearing in noise would be interesting.