gms | German Medical Science

Introduction: The final goal of hearing rehabilitation is to reach an optimal speech and language development. The latter will be affected by other factors such as the general development, presence of other handicaps and psycho-social factors. In order to achieve this goal, we started an interdisciplinary follow up program for hearing impaired children

Method: We started the follow up program for hearing impaired children in 2010. The program includes information material for the parents as well as multi-disciplinary evaluation of the children and counselling of the parents at regular intervals. Evaluation intervals include: pre-therapy/0/3/6/9/12/18/24/36/48/60/72 months following therapy. Specialists from following disciplines are involved in the evaluation and therapy to the children: Otology, Audiology, Speech & language pathology, Psychology, Rehabilitation-pedagogic and Technical support.

Results: Population description and audiological evaluation outcome: Up to September 2019, 103 children with cochlear implant (CI) and 141 children with hearing aids (HA) were included in the program. Table 1 shows the demographic data in CI and HA children. The wide range of intervention age was due to children with late-onset and progressive hearing loss included in the program. Fig.1 indicates that following fitting of hearing aid and/or cochlear implants, the hearing development of all children improved remarkably.

Demographic data of intelligence tests: 40 CI children did the WPPSI-III test, 18 females and 22 males. The average of hearing age and chronological age at test time was 3.30 (SD=1.39) and 5.24 (SD=0.80) years old. 31 were children implanted bilaterally, 9 children received unilateral implantation and two children had single-side deafness. According to the etiology children were divided into 3 categories: GJB2/6 mutation, CMV infection [W1][PF2] [PF3] and others. The corresponding number of children is 16, 5 and 18.

Intelligence tests outcome in CI children:

1.

Comparison of CI childrens IQ with normative data (Mean=100, SD=15): Compared with norms of normal-hearing children (NHC), CI childrens verbal IQ (M=89.39, SD=17.33) was worse than the NHC (M=100, SD=15), and the difference was significant t=-2.94, p>0.05. But processing speed index in CI children (M=110.00, SD=18.02) was significantly better than NHC (M=100, SD=15), t=3.14, p0.05) between the two groups.

2.

Correlations between demographic variables: Gender, age of diagnosis, age of first fitting, bilingual and amplification mode were not correlated with WPPSI scores. Etiology was significantly correlated with verbal IQ, r =-0.48 and total IQ, r=-0.52, both p<0.05.