SPEECH-PERCEPTION PERFORMANCE OF CHILDREN WITH A COCHLEAR IMPLANT COMPARED TO THAT OF CHILDREN WITH CONVENTIONAL HEARING-AIDS .1. THE EQUIVALENT HEARING-LOSS CONCEPT
Afm. Snik et al., SPEECH-PERCEPTION PERFORMANCE OF CHILDREN WITH A COCHLEAR IMPLANT COMPARED TO THAT OF CHILDREN WITH CONVENTIONAL HEARING-AIDS .1. THE EQUIVALENT HEARING-LOSS CONCEPT, Acta oto-laryngologica, 117(5), 1997, pp. 750-754
A new measure has been developed to quantify the speech perception per
formance of children with a cochlear implant (CI). The method summariz
es the speech perception scores obtained on a battery of tests that ra
nges from very basal tasks up to open speech recognition. The overall
performance of a child with a CI on the test battery at a certain time
during follow-up is matched to that of a reference group of severely
and profoundly hearing-impaired children with conventional hearing aid
s. This matching procedure results in the expression of the speech per
ception scores of a child with a CI as an ''equivalent hearing loss''
value. The equivalent hearing loss concept deals adequately with floor
and ceiling effects which inevitably occur when a battery with such a
large range of tests is used. To illustrate this, application of the
procedure to three children with a CI showed that before implantation,
while they were using conventional hearing aids, the equivalent heari
ng loss was above 120 dB hearing level(HL). At 3 years' follow-up the
equivalent hearing loss improved to 70 dB HL in the two children with
an aetiology of meningitis. This means that these children were perfor
ming as well as children in the reference group with a hearing loss of
70 dB HL. The child with congenital deafness showed minor improvement
s over time.