Outcome measures following tele-rehabilitation and conventional face to face rehabilitation in paediatric cochlear implant users during COVID-19 pandemic: A pilot study in a tertiary care setup.

Background: Following the COVID-19 pandemic, majority of paediatric cochlear implantees (CI) lost follow ups for rehabilitation and tele-therapy was initiated. Present study thus compared the outcome measures of paediatric CI users on tele-therapy versus conventional face to face therapy following COVID-19 pandemic.

Method: Twenty seven unilateral paediatric cochlear implantees in the age range of 2-11 years were divided into two groups based on the therapy modality, viz, tele- and face-to-face therapy. Based on the hearing age, participants were further divided into three groups, viz, 0-2, 2-4, and greater than four years. A complete the test battery comprising Integrated Scales of Development, Speech Intelligibility Rating scale, and Revised Categorical Auditory Perception were administered. The speech & language test battery was performed prior to initiating the rehabilitation and post 12 months of rehabilitation.

Results: Results of the present study revealed that conventional rehabilitation had better outcomes compared to teletherapy. The rate of progress after one year of rehabilitation with respect to hearing-age showed a significant difference for the hearing-age group of 0-2 years across the domains of audition, speech and language.

Conclusion: The present study indicates that conventional method of the speech-language and auditory rehabilitation is far better compared to the tele rehabilitation services especially for those visiting tertiary care hospitals as most of them belong to lower and middle socioeconomic status. From the results, it can be delineated that with lesser hearing experience, paediatric CI users always need to initially enroll for conventional therapy for better speech-language and auditory outcomes.