gms | German Medical Science

Introduction: The range of indications for CI has expanded over time to an increasingly wider audience and is now also indicated in patients with unilateral deafness. The new range of patients but also provides new challenges and requirements for doctors, engineers and educators.

Method: At the Medical School of Hannover, the language test results of 17 unilaterally deaf patients who were treated with a CI, were evaluated over a period of 2 years. For this, the results of the patients from the Freiburg monosyllable test numbers and, as well as from the HSM sentence test in quiet and in noise (10 dB S/N) were applied.

Results: The results, on average, show that the hearing achievements of the patients with CI right from the initial adjustment phase are quite high, but in the course remain relatively constant. Based on the standard deviations, it becomes apparent that the individual hearing ability varies greatly. The comparison of unilaterally deaf patients with bilaterally deaf patients treated with a unilateral CI indicates that the language test results of the bilaterally deaf patients are a little bit higher.

Discussion and Outlook: The cause of the remaining constant results of the unilaterally deaf patients after the initial adjustment phase, and the average slightly higher results of the bilaterally deaf patients, it is presumed, that the motivation to continue to train the CI-ear alone is different high. Therefore, it is necessary that not only bilaterally deaf patients, but also the unilaterally deaf patients continue to train the hearing with CI alone. For that purpose, the development of further specific auditory training materials for the unilaterally deaf patients is required.