gms | German Medical Science

Background: The treatment concept for single side deaf (SSD) patients currently changed from a CROS device to a unilateral cochlear implant. Recent studies show the benefit in localization and speech understanding when SSD is treated with cochlea implants. Whereas this approach is approved for patients with deafness duration of 3 years or less the use of cochlear implant for long term deafened patients is often seen critically, because of an estimated degeneration of the local neural structures and an affection of the auditory pathway.

Objective: The aim of this study was to compare the speech understanding of long-term and short-term deafened SSD cochlear implant patients and their progression over time.

Material and Methods: In a prospective study seven patients with SSD long-term (mean duration of deafness 21, 29 years) and seven patients with SSD short-term (mean duration of deafness 0,78 years) were evaluated. We compared the speech recognition in quiet with Freiburg number test, Freiburg monosyllabic words and Oldenburg sentence test after three month, six month and 12 month.

Results: The study showed near to similar results between long-term and short-term SSD patients for Freiburg number test and Freiburg monosyllabic words test after 12 month. Short-term SSD patients presented significantly better results three month and six month after first fitting.

Conclusion: The results of the speech recognition test show that treatment of SSD patients with long deafened duration is a useful treatment option. Short term deafness has a positive impact on progression of auditory results.