Degree of Satisfaction among Postlingual Cochlear Implant Users in Oman

Abstract

Background and Objectives: The reliability of cochlear implant in aural rehabilitation has been reported in numerous medical and healthcare related journals and its implementation are widely seen in many rehabilitation centers. However, the use of cochlear implants can be affected by the satisfaction of cochlear implant users. In addition, there is little or no data on the satisfaction of cochlear implant user in Oman in the literature. Hence this research considers conducting the study to find out the post-cochlear implantation satisfaction of postlingual Omani adult and adolescent users. Subjects and Methods: The number of participants in this study was 21 (12 males and 9 females) and their age ranges from 15 years to 65 years. An Arabic version (back-to-back translated) of Satisfaction with Amplification in Daily Life (SADL) Questionnaire was used in the study to estimate the participants’ satisfaction and was correlated with the participants’ results of speech perception tests. Results: All participants with the exception of one were satisfied as obtained from the SADL questionnaire. There was a significant correlation between the outcomes of speech perception tests with visual clues and the overall score of the SADL questionnaire (r =0.522) and it is significant at α ≤ 0.05. Conclusion: The results produced in this research are positive, further studies with a larger sample size are needed to generalize the findings