Functional Outcomes from Cochlear Implants in Children with Acquired Hearing Loss: Case Studies

Abstract

Purpose: Early identification of postlingual hearing loss (HL) and knowing its probable cause is of great significance. Causes that result in irreversible profound HL require immediate radiological investigation and intervention to decide the best listening device.Methods: Case reports of three children with acquired HL using cochlear implant (CI) are being presented to understand the functional outcomes in domains of audition and language skills after 12 months of CI use. The age of onset of deafness and implantation were not identical. Etiology of deafness was meningitis in two cases and viral infection in the other. Consent was obtained from the parents for participating in the study. Case history review was conducted to collect demographic and audiological details of the participants. Functional benefits from CI in those children were assessed in the domains of auditory and language skills using standardized assessment tools respectively.Results: Improvements in all domains of auditory and language skills were observed. However, the degree of benefits depended on the duration of deafness, etiology of deafness, age at onset of deafness, age at implantation and effectiveness of intervention.Conclusions: The results of the study can be used during pre-implant CI counselling to facilitate development of real expectations about the functional benefits of CI in children with acquired HL due to various reasons and showed the importance of early cochlear implantation following the diagnosis. These case presentations give an understanding of the various factors that can affect the functional outcome from CI in children with post-lingual HL.