PERFORMANCE OF PRELINGUALLY AND POSTLINGUALLY DEAF PATIENTS USING SINGLE-CHANNEL OR MULTICHANNEL COCHLEAR IMPLANTS

The auditory and aided lipreading performance of 8 prelingually and 11 postlingually deaf patients who had received a single-channel or mult ichannel cochlear implant was evaluated during 2 years of follow-up. A lthough all the patients improved on both closed-set pattern recogniti on and speech discrimination tests and on a Continuous Discourse Track ing task, the most significant improvement was observed in the postlin gually deaf patients who were using a multichannel implant. These pati ents were the only ones to achieve open-set speech recognition in the auditory-only condition. Only small differences were found between pre lingually deaf patients who were using a single-channel system and tho se who were using a multichannel system. The users' evaluations, obtai ned by means of a questionnaire, were generally positive in all patien ts. Based on the study results, the authors concluded that it is feasi ble to use cochlear implants in highly motivated prelingually deaf pat ients who have learned to use oral-aural communication.