Cochlear implants for children with significant residual hearing.

Background: Previous research suggests that children with pure-tone averages of greater than 90 dB hearing level and/or open-set sentence perception of less than 30% may derive significant benefit from cochlear implantation.

Objective: To evaluate postoperative speech perception benefit and bilateral-bimodal benefit for 16 children whose preimplant speech perception scores exceeded conservative candidacy guidelines.

Study Design: Preimplant and postimplant repeated-measure design.