Performance Of Cochlear Implant Recipients Research Articles

Benefits of upgrading to the Nucleus® 6 sound processor for a wider clinical population

Objectives: To determine whether a large clinical group of cochlear implant (CI) recipients demonstrated a difference in sentence recognition in noise when using their pre-upgrade sound processor compared to when using the Nucleus 6 processor, and to examine the impact of the following factors: implant type, sound processor type, age, or onset of hearing loss.Methods: A file review of 154 CI recipients (aged 7–92 years old) who requested an upgrade to the Nucleus 6 sound processor at the Cochlear Care Centre Melbourne was conducted. 105 recipients had complete data collected according to the protocol. A repeated measures, single subject design was used. Performance of CI recipients was compared with their pre-upgrade sound processor versus the Nucleus 6 processor using the Australian Sentence Test in Noise.Results: Group performance of CI recipients improved by 4.7 dB with the Nucleus 6 compared with the pre-upgrade sound processor. The benefit was not affected by pre-upgrade sound processor type or implant type (including older implant types and sound processors), age or onset of hearing loss (pre-lingual versus post-lingual).Conclusion: This study confirmed that a clinical group of CI recipients obtained a significant benefit when upgrading to the Nucleus 6 sound processor.

Cochlear Implants and Remote Microphone Technology

Advances in cochlear implant (CI) technology have allowed for impressive outcomes for implant recipients. In fact, many CI recipients achieve ceiling-level scores (i.e., near 100%) on sentence-recognition tests in quiet used in clinical settings. It is, however, well known that CI users often continue to experience difficulty with speech understanding in noisy and reverberant environments (e.g., classroom, restaurant, etc.). Recent research has indicated that performance in these difficult situations may be improved through the use of wireless remote microphone technology. In this article, a review will be provided of several studies that have explored the use of wireless remote microphones for CI users. Specifically, this review will focus on studies that have addressed both induction neckloop and directly coupled radiofrequency (RF) systems, fixed receiver gain settings, audio mixing ratio, adaptive frequency-modulated (FM) systems, cochlear implant signal processing, and digital RF systems. The effect of each of these items on a CI recipient's performance will be discussed. Additionally, clinical tips to optimize hearing assistance technology benefit for CI users will be provided as well as a protocol for fitting and verifying the appropriateness of wireless remote microphone technology for CI users and for optimizing user benefit.