Hearing ability by telephone of patients with cochlear implants

We investigated the telephone communication ability of patients with cochle ar implants who could understand conversations in natural voice without dif ficulty. The hearing ability of those patients with telephone adapters, whi ch usually are used to reduce noise level in the telephone and to record in to a tape recorder was also investigated. Vowel-confusion, consonant-confus ion, and speech-tracking test results of patients listening to voices by te lephone and by telephone adapter were compared with those of patients liste ning to natural, nontelephone voices. The average score of the speech-track ing test with natural voice was 111.5 phrases per 5 minutes. This score dro pped to 62.4 by telephone. However, with a telephone adapter, the score of the speech-tracking test was 109.3 phrases par 5 minutes. This was almost t he same score as that of the natural voice. So, generally speaking, the tel ephone communication ability of cochlear implant patients was not good enou gh. However, hearing ability with a telephone adapter came close to hearing ability during natural speech.