gms | German Medical Science

Introduction: Within the cochlear implant program 33 adult recipients were provided with an auditory brainstem implant since1996. For the evaluation of the hearing performance of the ABI-recipients with the CI-recipients it was necessary the find a test battery which can be accomplished by the ABI-recipients when routine tests are too difficult. For this reason the sound effect recognition test SERT was introduced to determine the hearing performance of the ABI-recipients in comparison to the CI-recipients as base for pre-operative counselling.

Method: A group of 12 ABI-recipients were compared with 3 groups of CI-recipients belonging to the different hearing performance groups “good, medium and low”.

The test battery consists of the sound effect recognition test which was actually modified as a recorded test presented at the computer and loudspeaker and the Freiburger Sprachverständlichkeitstest (numbers).

Results: The comparison of the hearing performance of the ABI-recipients with the CI-recipients showed similar results with the CI-recipients with low performance in the sound effect recognition test and the number test. There were no significant differences between both groups.

Discussion: In consequence for the pre-operative counselling, the similar meanings in hearing performance of the ABI-recipients with the CI-recipients with low performance let expect similar prospect of success. This means recognition of environmental sounds and speech understanding with lip-reading.

For future development there is to hope, that through enhancement in technology and speech decoding strategies a comparable hearing performance of the ABI-recipients with the CI-recipients with good and medium performance can be achieved.