All private and public residential and day schools for the deaf in the
U.S. that have 100 or more students were surveyed to see how many pre
lingually deafened students they had with cochlear implants and how ma
ny of these students were still using the device. Responses came from
70% (45 of 64) of those schools surveyed Of the 151 implanted children
identified, 71 (47%) were no longer using the cochlear implant. Of th
e remaining 80 children (53%) still wearing the device, we could clot
specifically determine by survey the percentage who derived significan
t benefit from the device and the percentage who did not However, nume
rous comments by those returning the questionnaires indicated desponde
ncy over the results of the implant.