Audiological aspects of the partial deafness cochlear implantation with hearing preservation

Abstract

The development of implant technologies and growing expertise in surgery and rehabilitation have changed cochlear implant candidacy criteria. Not only individuals with bilateral profound hearing loss receive cochlear implants, but also those with considerable residual hearing. In 2002, partial deafness cochlear implantation (PDCI) was pioneered by H. Skarżyński in the Institute of Physiology and Pathology of Hearing in Warsaw. The PDCI was a great challenge in terms of preserving the preoperative hearing and complementing this hearing ability with an implant. In particular, it concerned these situations when hearing in the low-frequency range was normal or fully functional, and it was necessary to complement it electrically in the medium- and high-frequency fields. The combination of low-frequency acoustic hearing and electrical stimulation allows a high level of speech understanding, particularly in noisy environments. This chapter gives an overview of three critical audiological aspects of PDCI: (1) assessment of hearing preservation after cochlear implantation, (2) assessment of speech discrimination improvement due to PDCI, and (3) transfer of the maximum amount of auditory information to a patient using an optimized electrical and acoustic stimulation fitting.