Combined Electric and Acoustic Stimulation With Hearing Preservation: Effect of Cochlear Implant Low-Frequency Cutoff on Speech Understanding and Perceived Listening Difficulty.

Objective: The primary objective of this study was to assess the effect of electric and acoustic overlap for speech understanding in typical listening conditions using semidiffuse noise.

Design: This study used a within-subjects, repeated measures design including 11 experienced adult implant recipients (13 ears) with functional residual hearing in the implanted and nonimplanted ear. The aided acoustic bandwidth was fixed and the low-frequency cutoff for the cochlear implant (CI) was varied systematically.

Pain-only complaint about cochlear implant device: A five-patient pediatric experience.

Objectives: To present the case histories and management of five pediatric patients who experienced pain at the receiver-stimulator site, but no other indication that the device was failing. Patients were from a sole-surgeon pediatric practice (600 + implant surgeries before June 2013; about even proportions of Advanced Bionics, Cochlear Corporation, and MED-EL devices).

Methods: The University Institutional Review Board-approved review of sole-surgeon pediatric case series.

The role of age on cochlear implant performance, use, and health utility: a multicenter clinical trial.

Objective: To use data obtained in a multicenter clinical trial to evaluate factors affecting performance with an implant, with special emphasis on the effect of age on performance.

Study Design And Setting: Post hoc analyses of data collected during a multicenter prospective study to evaluate performance with a recently introduced cochlear implant (CI) system conducted at 13 academic centers in the United States. Subjects participated in speech recognition testing in quiet and noise and completed questionnaires regarding health utility and processor use.

HiResolution and conventional sound processing in the HiResolution bionic ear: using appropriate outcome measures to assess speech recognition ability.

Objective: This study compared speech perception benefits in adults implanted with the HiResolution (HiRes) Bionic Ear who used both conventional and HiRes sound processing. A battery of speech tests was used to determine which formats were most appropriate for documenting the wide range of benefit experienced by cochlear-implant users.

Study Design: A repeated-measures design was used to assess postimplantation speech perception in adults who received the HiResolution Bionic Ear in a recent clinical trial.

Effects of hyperbaric exposure on the integrity of the internal components of commercially available cochlear implant systems.

Hypothesis: This study investigated whether pressure changes common to scuba diving and to hyperbaric oxygen therapy would not cause crush damage or leakage from critical seals in commercially available cochlear implants.

Background: The implanted packages of cochlear implants are susceptible to electrical failure caused by leakage from critical seals and to crush injury when exposed to changing barometric pressures encountered in recreational diving and in hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

Methods: Six Clarion 1.

Speech dynamic range and its effect on cochlear implant performance.

This study examines optimal conversions of speech sounds to audible electric currents in cochlear-implant listeners. The speech dynamic range was measured for 20 consonants and 12 vowels spoken by five female and five male talkers. Even when the maximal root-mean-square (rms) level was normalized for all phoneme tokens, both broadband and narrow-band acoustic analyses showed an approximately 50-dB distribution of speech envelope levels.