Cochlear implantation in prelingually deafened children with residual hearing.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine the speech perception skills of prelingually deafened French children with preoperative residual hearing who received multichannel cochlear implants.

Design: The design of the study incorporated a within-subject, repeated measures design for assessing speech perception skills.

Setting: Montpellier, Toulouse and Lyon Pediatric Cochlear Implant Centers.

Subjects: Seven prelingually deafened children demonstrating marginal benefit from conventional amplification prior to implantation with a Nucleus multichannel cochlear implant, served as subjects for the speech perception assessment (a speech recognition score less than 30% defines marginal benefit from acoustic amplification on open set materials). The mean age at implantation was 7 years, 9 months.

Outcome Measures: Speech perception skills were assessed using open set materials and the MUSS and MAIS questionnaires.

Results: Open-set speech recognition averaged 21.4% before implantation, and 83.6% after 1 year's cochlear implant experience. All children demonstrated an open-set score over 60% after 12 months of CI use. MAIS test scores averaged 18.1/40 before implantation and 35.1/40 after 9 months of CI use. MUSS test scores averaged 24.4/40 before implantation and 34.1/40 after 9 months of CI use.

Conclusions: Cochlear implantation should be considered for prelingually hearing impaired children demonstrating marginal benefit from hearing aids, with a speech recognition score less than 30% on open set materials, in order to improve their speech discrimination skills.