Effects of converting bilateral cochlear implant subjects to a strategy with increased rate and number of channels.
OBJECTIVE
Three different Advanced Bionics processing strategies were evaluated: 1) 8-channel, 813 pulses per second (pps), Continuous Interleaved Sampling (CIS); 2) 16-channel, 5,100 pps, HiResolution Paired (HiRes P); and 3) 16-channel, 2,900 pps, HiResolution Sequential (HiRes S).


METHODS
Seven adult bilateral Clarion CII cochlear implant recipients who had been using a CIS processing strategy for at least 18 months participated in this study. Sentence recognition in multitalker babble from the front was collected on subjects using their CIS strategy and after subjects were programmed for the first time with HiRes P and HiRes S strategies. An ABAB design was implemented for 1 month whereby subjects used each HiResolution strategy every other day. Sentence recognition testing was repeated at the 1- and 3-month post-HiResolution test intervals.


RESULTS
Comparisons between the CIS and HiResolution strategies showed immediate improvements for 5 subjects in favor of the HiResolution strategies. After 1 month of alternating between the HiRes P and HiRes S strategies, remarkably, 2 subjects showed improvements of 60%, 2 subjects showed improvements of 40%, and 2 subjects showed improvements of 30% over the CIS strategy that they had previously used for at least 18 months. The results after 3 months of use were consistent with those obtained at 1 month.


CONCLUSIONS
The HiRes S and HiRes P strategies resulted in dramatic improvements in speech perception in noise for a subset of subjects who had been using the CIS strategy bilaterally. This finding demonstrates that these subjects were able to tolerate a more difficult signal-to-noise ratio. Further work is needed to determine the independent effects of rate versus number of channels.
Dunn
Camille C
CC
Dept of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, University of Iowa, 21038, Iowa City, IA 52242-1078, USA.
Tyler
Richard S
RS
Witt
Shelley A
SA
Gantz
Bruce J
BJ
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D003054:Cochlear Implants; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006319:Hearing Loss, Sensorineural / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000628:therapy*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D011474:Prosthesis Design; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D013063:Speech Discrimination Tests; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D016896:Treatment Outcome