Publications by authors named "Terry Nunn"
Hypotheses: In newly implanted cochlear implant (CI) users, electrically evoked compound action (eCAPs) and electrocochleography (ECochGs) will remain stable over time. Electrode impedances will increase immediately postimplantation due to the initial inflammatory response, before decreasing after CI switch-on and stabilizing thereafter.
Background: The study of cochlear health (CH) has several applications, including explaining variation in CI outcomes, informing CI programming strategies, and evaluating the safety and efficacy of novel biological treatments for hearing loss.
Recent technological advances in cochlear implant (CI) telemetry have enabled, for the first time, CI users to perform cochlear health (CH) measurements through self-assessment for prolonged periods of time. This is important to better understand the influence of CH on CI outcomes, and to assess the safety and efficacy of future novel treatments for deafness that will be administered as adjunctive therapies to cochlear implantation. We evaluated the feasibility of using a CI to assess CH and examined patterns of electrode impedances, electrically-evoked compound action potentials (eCAPs) and electrocochleography (ECochGs), over time, in a group of adult CI recipients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To review the outcomes of cochlear implants (CI) in patients with neurofibromatosis type 2 (NF2) in a large cohort, and identify factors associated with poor hearing benefit.
Study Design: Fifteen-year retrospective national observational case series.
Setting: United Kingdom regional NF2 multidisciplinary teams.
Objectives: The primary objective of this study was to establish the reproducibility of cochlear microphonic (CM) recordings obtained from a cochlear implant (CI) electrode contact during and immediately after insertion. This was achieved by evaluating the insertion angle and calculating the position of the apical electrode contact during insertion, using postoperative cone beam computed tomography (CBCT). The secondary objective was to create individualized patient maps of electrode contacts located within acoustically sensitive regions by correlating the CM amplitude to the electrode position determined using CBCT.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: The average life expectancy in the United Kingdom is currently nearly 80 years for a newborn baby with nearly 15% of the population, by 2040, being >75 years old. Hearing impairment is a common disability in the elderly individual, and there have been significant drives to support this population to lead longer and healthier working lives. We aimed to assess the long-term audiological and health-related quality-of-life benefits of cochlear implants (CI) in elderly individuals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To systematically review the evidence of how adjustments of the electrical threshold (T) level, input dynamic range (IDR) and electrical stimulation rate impact on speech perception for cochlear implant (CI) users.
Design: Systematic review.
Study Sample: A search of two electronic data sources yielded 32 studies, which met the inclusion criteria.
Article Synopsis
- The Vibrant Soundbridge and Bonebridge are middle ear and bone-conducting hearing implants that transmit data using radio frequencies, minimizing skin issues but requiring more complex surgery.
- The study aims to assess the reliability and complication rates of these devices, as well as their impact on quality of life and auditory performance after implantation.
- This research is a multi-center longitudinal observational study, the first of its kind, incorporating various methodologies to evaluate patient outcomes over time.
Background: Adult cochlear implant (CI) candidacy is assessed in part by the use of speech perception measures. In the United Kingdom the current cut-off point to fall within the CI candidacy range is a score of less than 50% on the BKB sentences presented in quiet (presented at 70 dBSPL).
Goal: The specific goal of this article was to review the benefit of adding the AB word test to the assessment test battery for candidacy.
Background: Individuals with a unilateral severe-to-profound hearing loss, or single-sided deafness, report difficulty with listening in many everyday situations despite having access to well-preserved acoustic hearing in one ear. The standard of care for single-sided deafness available on the UK National Health Service is a contra-lateral routing of signals hearing aid which transfers sounds from the impaired ear to the non-impaired ear. This hearing aid has been found to improve speech understanding in noise when the signal-to-noise ratio is more favourable at the impaired ear than the non-impaired ear.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To compare the fitting time requirements and the efficiency in achieving improvements in speech perception during the first 6 months after initial stimulation of computer-assisted fitting with the Fitting to Outcome eXpert' (FOX) and a standard clinical fitting procedure.
Method: Twenty-seven post-lingually deafened adults, newly implanted recipients of the Advanced Bionics HiRes 90K™ cochlear implant from Germany, the UK, and France took part in a controlled, randomized, clinical study. Speech perception was measured for all participants and fitting times were compared across groups programmed using FOX and conventional programming methods.
Objectives/hypothesis: To evaluate the outcome of cochlear implantation (CI) in patients with vestibular schwannoma (VS).
Study Design: A retrospective case series from a tertiary auditory implant center.
Methods: A retrospective case note review was carried out to evaluate patients with bilateral profound hearing loss and VS who underwent unilateral CI within the Auditory Implant Centre at St.
Objectives: The objective was to develop and evaluate a new sentence test, the Sentence Test with Adaptive Randomized Roving levels, intended to emulate everyday listening experience, using both normal-hearing (NH) and cochlear implant (CI) groups, examining practicality, learning, test-retest variability, and interlist variability.
Design: In experiment 1, each of 25 NH adults was tested using five lists, each comprising 30 sentences. One male and one female speaker each spoke 15 sentences.
Conclusion: The bone-anchored hearing aid (BAHA) system can offer significant benefits to patients with single-sided deafness (SSD), primarily by lifting the head shadow effect.
Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of BAHA for SSD by comparing pre- and postoperative speech, spatial and qualities of hearing scale (SSQ) scores.
Methods: This was a prospective study conducted within a tertiary auditory implant department.
The deliberate addition of Gaussian noise to cochlear implant signals has previously been proposed to enhance the time coding of signals by the cochlear nerve. Potentially, the addition of an inaudible level of noise could also have secondary benefits: it could lower the threshold to the information-bearing signal, and by desynchronization of nerve discharges, it could increase the level at which the information-bearing signal becomes uncomfortable. Both these effects would lead to an increased dynamic range, which might be expected to enhance speech comprehension and make the choice of cochlear implant compression parameters less critical (as with a wider dynamic range, small changes in the parameters would have less effect on loudness).
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