gms | German Medical Science

80th Annual Meeting of the German Society of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, Head and Neck Surgery

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

20.05. - 24.05.2009, Rostock

Article

Send article

Sequential bilateral cochlear implantation for patients with long duration of deafness

Meeting Abstract

Search Medline for

  • corresponding author Gert Joseph - Medizinische Hochschule Hannover Klinik für Hals-, Nasen-, Ohrheilkunde, Hannover, Germany
  • Andreas Büchner - Medizinische Hochschule Hannover Klinik für Hals-, Nasen-, Ohrheilkunde, Hannover, Germany
  • Minoo Lenarz - Medizinische Hochschule Hannover Klinik für Hals-, Nasen-, Ohrheilkunde, Hannover, Germany
  • Thomas Lenarz - Medizinische Hochschule Hannover Klinik für Hals-, Nasen-, Ohrheilkunde, Hannover, Germany

German Society of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, Head and Neck Surgery. 80th Annual Meeting of the German Society of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, Head and Neck Surgery. Rostock, 20.-24.05.2009. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2009. Doc09hno013

doi: 10.3205/09hno013, urn:nbn:de:0183-09hno0135

Published: July 22, 2009

© 2009 Joseph 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

Text

Introduction: Many studies showed that duration of deafness is the most important preoperative influence factor for the success of a cochlear implantation. Due to the fact that more and more patients ask for a bilateral CI, we are confronted with the question, how to deal with patients with long duration of deafness on the second ear. The results of sequential bilateral implanted patients with duration of deafness on the second ear of more than 20 years and a distance of more than 2 years between implantations on both sides are presented.

Methods: 122 patients have been sequential bilateral implanted in MHH since 1984 who have been older than 18 years at the time of second side implantation, were postlingually deafened, were native German speakers and had no additional handicaps. For 43 of these patients duration of deafness on the second side was more than 20 years and distance between implantation on both sides was more than 2 years. The mean duration of deafness on the primarily implanted ear varied from 0 to 45 years with a mean value of 14.9 years. For the second ear, the mean duration of deafness was 33 years (20 to 53,4 years). Performance was measured with the HSM sentence test.

Results: Sequential bilateral implanted patients achieved a result of 48.5±38.4% in the HSM sentence test on the recent implanted ear 6 month after implantation of the second side. For patients with an extremely long duration of deafness of more than 30 years (n=23) the corresponding result was 42.2±39.9%.

Conclusion: Bilateral cochlear implantation has a good chance of success even at long duration of deafness on the second ear.