Illness perceptions in cochlear implant users - a longitudinal study.

Purpose: 'Illness perceptions' refers to the thoughts and ideas a person has about an illness. According to Leventhal's Self-Regulatory Model (SRM), changing the threatening illness perceptions of cochlear implant (CI) recipients can be a further step in optimizing hearing outcomes with the CI. The aims of the present study were to assess users' illness perceptions and to determine whether perceptions change during six months of CI rehabilitation.

Associations between illness perceptions, word recognition, and perceived sound quality in cochlear implant users.

Objective: Illness perceptions refer to thoughts and ideas an individual has about an illness. The aim was to understand how cochlear implant (CI) users' illness perceptions, in addition to their monosyllabic word recognition abilities, are associated with their self-perceived sound quality.

Design: Data were collected during routine CI check-up appointments.

Depressive symptoms affect short- and long-term speech recognition outcome in cochlear implant users.

Purpose: To investigate the impact of the amount of depressive symptoms in cochlear implant (CI) recipients on the development of speech recognition after CI-activation up to 2 years.

Design: Retrospective data analysis of a German short form of the Beck Depression Inventory given at initial activation of the implant in relation to monosyllabic word recognition score at conversational level at initial activation and at 3 months, 1 and 2-year follow-up measurements.

Study Sample: Thirty-one CI-patients (11 female, 20 male) aged between 41 and 83 (M = 64.