Cochlear Implant Outcomes and Quality of Life in Adults with Prelingual Deafness

Objectives: To evaluate sound and speech perception and quality of life in prelingually deafened adults implanted with state of the art devices. To investigate which patient factors influence postoperative performance.

Study Design: Prospective intervention study.

Methods: Eight prelingually deafened subjects (with onset of severe hearing impairment before the age of 4 years and functioning in an oral-aural setting) participated in this study. Subjects were implanted at a mean age of 36 (range, 21-55) years with a CII or 90 K cochlear implant (Advanced Bionics Corp.). All subjects completed standard speech perception tests as well as quality of life measures (Health Utility Index Mark-II, Nijmegen Cochlear Implant Questionnaire, visual analogue scale for subject's hearing and health) at different points in time. Postoperative scores were compared with each other and with the baseline preoperative scores. The relationship between nine patient variables and the postoperative consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) phoneme score was also investigated.

Results: Significant improvement was measured for CVC word and phoneme scores and several quality of life measures. Postoperative speech perception correlated with a new and promising factor named quality of a patient's own speech production (QoSP).

Conclusion: With state of the art implants, speech perception and quality of life do improve in prelingually deafened adults. More importantly, the prognostic value of QoSP should be investigated further.