MULTICHANNEL COCHLEAR IMPLANTATION IN POSTMENINGITIC AND CONGENITALLYDEAF-CHILDREN

Objective: To test the view that prelinguistic postmeningitic deaf (PM D) children outperform congenitally deaf children (CD) in the first ye ar following cochlear implanation. Study Design and Patients: We evalu ated 85 children with ages (at implantation) ranging from 1.9 years to 13.5 years (mean age 5.4 years). The Listening Progress scale was use d to assess the developing use of audition 3, 6, and 12 months after i mplantation. Results: In contrast to previous reports, the PMD childre n achieved statistically significantly lower scores than CD children.