Inpatient rehabilitation of adult CI users: Results in dependency of duration of deafness, CI experience and age

Abstract

Cochlear implants (CI) have proven to be a highly effective treatment for severe hearing loss or deafness. Inpatient rehabilitation therapy is frequently discussed as a means to increase the speech perception abilities achieved by CI. However, thus far there exists no quantitative evaluation of the effect of these therapies. A retrospective analysis of audiometric data obtained from 1355 CI users compared standardized and qualitative speech intelligibility tests conducted at two time points (admission to and discharge from inpatient hearing therapy, duration 3-5 weeks). The test battery comprised examination of vowel/consonant identification, the Freiburg numbers and monosyllabic test (65 and 80 dB sound pressure level, SPL, free-field sound level), the Hochmair-Schulz-Moser (HSM) sentence test in quiet and in noise (65 dB SPL speech level; 15 dB signal-to-noise ratio, SNR), and a speech tracking test with and without lip-reading. An average increase of 20 percentage points was scored at discharge compared to the admission tests. Patients of all ages and duration of deafness demonstrated the same amount of benefit from the rehabilitation treatment. After completion of inpatient rehabilitation treatment, patients with short duration of CI experience (below 4 months) achieved test scores comparable to experienced long-term users. The demonstrated benefit of the treatment was independent of age and duration of deafness or CI experience. The rehabilitative training program significantly improved hearing abilities and speech perception in CI users, thus promoting their professional and social inclusion. The present results support the efficacy of inpatient rehabilitation for CI recipients. Integration of this or similar therapeutic concepts in the German catalog of follow-up treatment measures appears justified.