Longer-Term Functional Outcomes and Everyday Listening Performance for Young Children Through to Young Adults Using Bilateral Implants

Abstract

Overall, the results indicate primarily positive functional outcomes for children and young adults receiving bilateral implants at all ages, including when the delay between implants is long. The results are important for evidence-based preoperative counseling, which helps families to make informed decisions and develop appropriate expectations. The results are also important for the development of clinical management practices that support and encourage the minority of recipients who have difficulty adapting to bilateral implants or achieving full-time use.

Everyday Listening Performance of Children Before and After Receiving a Second Cochlear Implant

“…This result is consistent with those of previous studies in which parents, teachers and adolescents have all identified group conversations as particularly difficult for CI users, with some emphasising the additional difficulties caused by the presence of background noise (Bat-Chava & Deignan, 2001;Rich et al, 2013;Wheeler et al, 2007). The significantly higher performance ratings in the BiCIs condition for the present children in group conversations are consistent with previous anecdotal reports that children function better and are more confident in group communication when using BiCIs (Galvin et al, 2014;Redfern & McKinley, 2011), and with parent reports that the use of BiCIs predicts positive communication, social, and academic outcomes, including participation in a mainstream classroom (Hyde et al, 2011). The importance of an improved ability to participate in group conversations cannot be overestated.…”

Achievement of early clinical milestones and long-term functional outcomes for children and young adults with bilateral cochlear implants

“…When compared with an older implanted group (>3.5 years; n = 32), significantly more parents in a younger-implanted group (≤3.5 years; n = 25) reported a positive outcome on each of the measures of: adaptation to BiCIs, BiCI usage, device preference, attitude towards the second implant, and performance with each implant alone (χ 2 ≥ 4.71, P ≤ 0.03). A detailed description of this data was presented in Galvin et al (2014).…”

The effect of device use after sequential bilateral cochlear implantation in children: An electrophysiological approach

“…If we had included children with a wider range in inter-implant delay, this factor might have been significant. For example, Galvin et al [16] showed that, in contrast to the whole study group, in a large group of children with various inter-implant delays, no significant effect of inter-implant delay on ease of adaptation was found when the children who were implanted simultaneously were left out of the analysis. Furthermore, in the children and adolescents in the study of Illg et al [9], inter-implant delay had a significant influence on speech comprehension with the CI2.…”

“…To our knowledge, however, the effect of device use on auditory brainstem maturation has never been investigated. On average, we know that approximately 25-35% of the children implanted sequentially are not full-time CI2 users [11,16,17]. When this factor is taken into account, the critical period for sequential bilateral cochlear implantation might be extended.…”