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81st Annual Meeting of the German Society of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, Head and Neck Surgery

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

12.05. - 16.05.2010, Wiesbaden

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Open-set speech recognition of early deafened adults who received a cochlear implant

Meeting Abstract

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  • corresponding author presenting/speaker Alexandros Giourgas - MHH HNO, Hannover, Germany
  • Thomas Lenarz - MHH HNO, Hannover, Germany
  • Anke Lesinski-Schiedat - MHH HNO, Hannover, Germany

German Society of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, Head and Neck Surgery. 81st Annual Meeting of the German Society of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, Head and Neck Surgery. Wiesbaden, 12.-16.05.2010. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2010. Doc10hno049

doi: 10.3205/10hno049, urn:nbn:de:0183-10hno0496

Published: July 6, 2010

© 2010 Giourgas 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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Introduction: Patients with prelingual or perilingual deafness are usually not classified as candidates for a cochlear implantation. The present retrospective study examines the open-set speech recognition of early deafened patients who received a cochlear implant in an adult age.

Methods and results: Assessed data of 42 Patients with a mean age at onset of 0.13 years were so far analyzed. The development of the first two years after implantation was reviewed. Preoperatively, the mean best aided threshold at 0.25 kHz was 83.5 dB. The age at implantation averaged 28.3 years with the patients having a mean experience with hearing aids of 21.6 years. Routine measurements included the Freiburger Numbers and Monosyllables in quiet, and the Hochmair-Schulz-Moser Sentences in quiet, and in noise (65 dB SPL/10 dB SNR). Additionally, the patients were divided into 4 groups according to their ability to communicate verbally (intelligibility).

The patients’ mean performance raised postoperatively reaching performance plateaus after one year. The best speech perception was measured in patients with the highest competence in verbal communication and speech intelligibility, even if they had received elder implant types.

Conclusions: Early deafened patients gain profit from a cochlear implantation. However, individual prognostic parameters, especially their competence in verbal communication, should be taken into account.