Cochlear implants and bacterial meningitis: A speech recognition study in paired samples

Abstract

Summary Introduction: Cochlear implants may guarantee sound perception and the ability to detect speech at a close-to-normal hearing intensity; however, differences have been observed among implantees in terms of performance on discrimination tests and speech recognition. Objective: To identify whether patients with post-meningitis deafness perform similarly to patients with hearing loss due to other causes. Method: A retrospective clinical study involving post-lingual patients who had been using Nucleus-22 or Nucleus-24 cochlear implants for at least 1 year. These patients were matched with respect to age (± 2 years), time since the onset of deafness (± 1 year), and the duration of implant use with implant users who had hearing loss due to other causes. Speech perception was assessed using the Portuguese version of the Latin-American Protocol for the Evaluation of Cochlear Implants. Results: The sample consisted of 52 individuals (26 in each of the 2 groups). The post-meningitic group had a median of 18.5 active electrodes. The group with hearing loss due to other causes had a median of 21, but no significant statistical difference was observed (p = 0.07). The results of closed- and open-set speech recognition tests showed great variability in speech recognition between the studied groups. These differences were more pronounced for the most difficult listening tasks, such as the medial consonant task (in the vowel-consonant-vowel format). Conclusion: Cochlear implant recipients with hearing loss due to bacterial meningitis, who had been using the device for 1 year performed more poorly on closed- and open-set speech recognition tests than did implant recipients with hearing loss due to other causes.

A Comparison of Surgical Auditory Nerve Response and Speech Outcomes in Patients with Post-meningitic Deafness and Without Cochlear Osteogenesis Who Underwent Cochlear Implantation

“…Consistent with El-Kashlan et al, a recent study done by Ikeya et al [10] on adults demonstrated that patients with post-meningitic deafness benefitted significantly from cochlear implantation; however, the audiological outcomes were still hard to predict in some cases, especially in the presence of ossification [10]. In the one year follow-up after utilizing the device, assessment of speech recognition revealed poorer results in cochlear implant recipients with hearing loss due to bacterial meningitis than those with hearing loss due to other causes who used the device for the same period of time [17]. In an Iranian study, a survey was done for the assessment of CI outcomes in the form of auditory and speech abilities in post-meningitis deaf children and revealed that outcomes were not the same as in non-meningitis deaf children.…”

When May Cochlear Implant Not Work Even at a Very Young Age?

“…The importance of supporting families involved in the child's rehabilitation process has been reinforced and proven in numerous studies. 4,[10][11][12][13][14][15][16] Lind-Combs & Holt 15 (2022) conducted a study with 62 dyads of children with typical hearing and with hearing loss using conventional hearing aids or cochlear implants, between 3 and 8 years of age. They found that the vocabulary used by the family associated with a mental state (such as: I think that, I feel that) positively affected the inhibitory control of children using hearing devices.…”