Benefits of upgrading to the Nucleus^® 6 sound processor for a wider clinical population

Abstract

This study confirmed that a clinical group of CI recipients obtained a significant benefit when upgrading to the Nucleus 6 sound processor.

The COVID-19 pandemic and upgrades of CI speech processors for children: part II–hearing outcomes

“…In the second study, the Australian Sentence Test in Noise was used to compare the performance of 105 recipients of the Nucleus 6 processor with the pre-upgrade sound processor [ 4 ], and here the upgrade improved group performance by 4.7 dB. Again, this improvement is somewhat larger than we report, but different speech materials were used.…”

“…In two other studies [ 4 , 10 ], the speech was presented from the front and the noise from the back, the same as in our study. In the first study [ 10 ], 10 experienced adult unilateral CI recipients performed a German adaptive Oldenburg sentence test in noise with the Opus 2 pre-upgrade speech processor (omnidirectional microphone mode) and the Sonnet processor (both for omnidirectional and directional microphone modes).…”

“…Again, this improvement is somewhat larger than we report, but different speech materials were used. Moreover, in the study of Todorov and Galvin [ 4 ], additionally to microphone directionality, other front-end processing features such as dynamic range adjustment and noise reduction were active in the new speech processors but were not available in the pre-upgrade processors.…”

“…Due to COVID-19 pandemic we decided to use different assessment for each upgrade group. The processors were upgraded on 5 consecutive Saturdays, one Saturday we evaluated the advantage of microphone directionality in Sonnet 2, the other Saturday the speech processors were upgraded to Nucleus 7 or Kanso 2 there were no benefit examination as the benefit of directional microphone when upgrading to the Nucleus 7 speech processor has already been evaluated by others [ 3 , 4 ]. During remaining three Saturdays we decided to use different questionnaires for each update group.…”

Wertigkeit von Patient-Reported Outcome Measures zur Bewertung des Versorgungsvorteils der Sprachprozessorumversorgung bei Patient/-innen mit Cochleaimplantaten

“…By optimizing speech-coding strategies, signal processing, and microphone technologies, new speech processors can also help to improve auditory performance [ 4 , 9 , 21 , 24 ]. This includes, for example, the introduction of new directional microphone options but also possibilities for automatic adaptation to special listening situations or noise reduction [ 18 – 20 , 25 ]. Many of these features have been adopted from modern conventional hearing aids.…”