Speech Understanding and Subjective Listening Effort in Noise With Different OTEs and Sound Processing Technologies.

Objective: To determine speech reception thresholds (SRTs) in noise and subjective listening effort (LE) in cochlear implant (CI) recipients for application of three sound processing (SP) technologies with two off-the-ear (OTE) CI sound processors, a fixed moderately directional microphone (Standard), an adaptive directional microphone (Beam), and the spatial noise-reduction setting ForwardFocus, with the Kanso 2 (OTE2), and Beam with the Kanso (OTE1).

Study Design: Prospective repeated measures, within-subject design.

Setting: Single tertiary-referral center.

Speech Perception in Quiet and Noise With an Off the Ear CI Processor Enabling Adaptive Microphone Directionality.

Objective: To investigate the impact of the wearing position of an off-the-ear-processor (OTE) on speech perception in quiet and noise.

Patients: The study group consisted of 16 adult subjects with bilateral severe-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss, 2 of them unilaterally, and 14 bilaterally provided with cochlear implants.

Main Outcome Measures: Speech perception in quiet and noise was measured for frontal presentation with the recipients behind-the-ear processor CP810 or CP910 and the OTE processor Kanso (Cochlear Limited, Sydney, Australia).

The benefits of sequential bilateral cochlear implantation for hearing-impaired children.

Conclusion: Sequential bilateral implantation offers listening advantages demonstrable on speech recognition in noise and for lateralization. Whilst the trend was for shorter inter-implant intervals and longer implant experience to positively impact binaural advantage, we observed no contraindications for binaural advantage.

Objective: To evaluate the benefits of sequential bilateral cochlear implantation over unilateral implantation in a multicentre study evaluating speech recognition in noise and lateralization of sound.