Value of pre-operative caloric test in predicting speech perception after cochlear implantation in adults with post-lingual hearing loss.

Conclusion: This study shows that, in cochlear implantation (CI) surgery, pre-operative caloric test results are not correlated with post-operative outcomes of dizziness or speech perception.

Objectives: To determine the role of pre-operative caloric tests in CI.

Methods: The records of 95 patients who underwent unilateral CI were reviewed retrospectively. Patients were divided into four groups according to caloric response. Forty-six patients with normal caloric responses were classified as Group A, 19 patients who underwent CI in the ear with worse caloric responses as Group B, 18 patients with bilateral loss of caloric responses as Group C, and 12 patients who underwent CI in the ear with better caloric responses as Group D. Speech performance and post-operative dizziness were compared between the four groups. Speech perception was determined by evaluating consonant-vowel phoneme detection, closed-set word and open-set mono-syllabic and bi-syllabic word identification, and sentence comprehension test scores.

Results: The speech perception and aided pure-tone average (PTA) test results at 3 and 6 months and at 1, 2, and 3 years after implantation were not significantly different between Groups A, B, C, and D (p > 0.05). Eight patients (8.4%) reported post-operative dizziness, but there was no significant difference between the four groups (p = 0.627).