Teledelivery of Aural Rehabilitation to Improve Cochlear Implant Outcomes.

Objective(s): This randomized controlled study evaluated the effectiveness of a Telehealth Aural Rehabilitation (TeleAR) training protocol to improve outcomes for adult cochlear implant (CI) users.

Methods: This was a multisite clinical study with participants randomized to either an AR treatment or active control group. The AR protocol consisted of auditory training (words, sentences, and speech tracking), informational counseling, and communication strategies.

Maximizing Cochlear Implant Outcomes with Short-Term Aural Rehabilitation.

Background: Increasing numbers of adults are receiving cochlear implants (CIs) and many achieve high levels of speech perception and improved quality of life. However, a proportion of implant recipients still struggle due to limited speech recognition and/or greater communication demands in their daily lives. For these individuals a program of aural rehabilitation (AR) has the potential to improve outcomes.

Optimizing Performance in Adult Cochlear Implant Users through Clinician Directed Auditory Training.

Clinician-directed auditory training using the KTH Speech Tracking Procedure can be a powerful approach for maximizing outcomes with adult cochlear implant (CI) users. This article first reviews prior research findings from an 8-week clinician-directed auditory training (AT) program using speech tracking that yielded significant gains in speech tracking rate and sentence recognition scores following training. The second focus of the article is to illustrate the value of intensive face-to-face long-term AT using speech tracking with adult CI users.