Natural history of contralateral residual hearing in unilateral cochlear implant users - Long-term findings

Noam Yehudai, Talma Shpak, Tova Most, Michal Luntz*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

Conclusion: The long-term stability of low-frequency residual hearing found in a significant number of bilateral-bimodal users (cochlear implant (CI) in one ear and a hearing aid (HA) on the other ear; CI/HA) with severe-to-profound or profound hearing loss in the non-implanted ear justifies bilateral-bimodal fitting efforts in this group. Since low-frequency residual hearing tends to deteriorate in some of these CI/HA users, periodic evaluation, which includes pure-tone thresholds and speech perception tests, is mandatory for determining the point in time at which CI/HA hearing is no longer effective, and the patient should accordingly be considered as a candidate for contralateral cochlear implantation. Objective: To determine, in bilateral-bimodal (CI/HA) users with severe-to-profound or profound hearing loss in the non-implanted ear, the rate of residual hearing deterioration in the non-implanted ear after cochlear implantation. Methods: Pure-tone aided and unaided thresholds in the non-implanted ears of 39 CI/HA users at 0.254.0 kHz were recorded prospectively up to 6 years after implantation. Results: Group mean threshold values in the non-implanted ears remained stable over 3, 4, 5 and 6 years post-implantation, except for significant deterioration at 4.0 kHz of both unaided (4.2, 5.2, 9.0 and 8.2 dB, respectively) and aided thresholds (8.1, 4.6, 6.1 and 8.3 dB, respectively).

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1073-1076
Number of pages4
JournalActa Oto-Laryngologica
Volume132
Issue number10
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 2012

Keywords

  • Bimodal
  • Hearing aid
  • Hearing loss

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