Results of total deafness treatment in young pre- and postlingually deafened children.

Abstract

Developing a cochlear implant program is one of the most difficult problems we need to solve concerning young children. Application of cochlear implants to this group of patients gives hope for better speech and language development than using conventional hearing aids. Children comprise approximately 40% of all implanted patients at the Institute of Physiology and Pathology of Hearing in Warsaw. They are provided with different types of cochlear implants, 16 of which are included in the international comparative study EARS (Evaluation of Auditory Responses to Speech). In this paper results are presented of auditory speech perception in pre-, peri-and postlingual children using the multichannel cochlear implant systems COMBI 40 and 40+. All the children were regularly evaluated following the EARS procedure with a number of perception tests. Monitoring of auditory perception development is fundamental and allows prognosis of speech and language development in children.