Short-term effect of auditory feedback on fundamental frequency after cochlear implantation

The present study evaluates the short-term effect of cochlear implantation on the fundamental frequency (F0) of 13 deaf patients. All patients were pr ovided with the Combi 40+ cochlear implant. Voice recording was made pre- a nd 3 months post-implantation. The F0 was analysed using X-Tools software. The results showed that 38 per cent of our subjects had a statistically sig nificant decrease of their mean F0 (p=0.001) at 3 months following implanta tion. It was also observed that the patients tended to have a lower F0 post operatively approaching the normal range of F0. A large variability in F0 w as noticed among the deaf subjects but no correlation with the duration of deafness was seen. There was also no correlation between speech recognition and speech production.