COCHLEAR IMPLANT RESULTS - A COMPARISON OF LIVE-VOICE AND VIDEOTAPED TESTS

The Cambridge Cochlear Implant Programme has so far implanted the Iner aid multichannel cochlear implant in 16 profoundly deaf adult patients ; there has been a 9-month or longer follow-up period with these patie nts. We have evaluated these patients by open-set Bamford-Kowal-Bench (BKB) Standard Sentence List testing in two different delivery strateg ies, live-speaker testing by the same speaker and high-resolution vide otaped testing. The performance in Lip reading both before and 9 month s after implantation has been tested, as well as performance with the implant alone and with the implant in conjunction with lip reading at the 9-month stage. We have compared the performance in these two deliv ery strategies and have found a significantly better performance in th e live-speaker tests that is attributable to slower and perhaps more s ympathetic delivery. We have also found evidence of a ceiling effect i n the performance of the implant with lip reading in the live-speaker mode and, of greater importance, a floor effect in the performance of the implant alone with the videotaped test. These results and the impl ications for a complementary role of these two test-delivery modes are discussed.