Natural history of contralateral residual hearing in unilateral cochlear implant users - long-term findings.
CONCLUSIONS
The long-term stability of low-frequency residual hearing found in a significant number of bilateral-bimodal users (cochlear implant (CI) in one ear and a hearing aid (HA) on the other ear; CI/HA) with severe-to-profound or profound hearing loss in the non-implanted ear justifies bilateral-bimodal fitting efforts in this group. Since low-frequency residual hearing tends to deteriorate in some of these CI/HA users, periodic evaluation, which includes pure-tone thresholds and speech perception tests, is mandatory for determining the point in time at which CI/HA hearing is no longer effective, and the patient should accordingly be considered as a candidate for contralateral cochlear implantation.


OBJECTIVE
To determine, in bilateral-bimodal (CI/HA) users with severe-to-profound or profound hearing loss in the non-implanted ear, the rate of residual hearing deterioration in the non-implanted ear after cochlear implantation.


METHODS
Pure-tone aided and unaided thresholds in the non-implanted ears of 39 CI/HA users at 0.25-4.0 kHz were recorded prospectively up to 6 years after implantation.


RESULTS
Group mean threshold values in the non-implanted ears remained stable over 3, 4, 5 and 6 years post-implantation, except for significant deterioration at 4.0 kHz of both unaided (4.2, 5.2, 9.0 and 8.2 dB, respectively) and aided thresholds (8.1, 4.6, 6.1 and 8.3 dB, respectively).
Cochlear Implant Program, Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery, Bnai-Zion Medical Center, Technion-Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Haifa, Israel.
Noam
N
Yehudai
Talma
T
Shpak
Tova
T
Most
Michal
M
Luntz
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D019929:Cochlear Implantation / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000379:methods*; D003054:Cochlear Implants; D015331:Cohort Studies; D018450:Disease Progression; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006310:Hearing Aids; D006312:Hearing Loss, Bilateral / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000628:therapy*; D006319:Hearing Loss, Sensorineural / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000628:therapy*; D006320:Hearing Tests; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D018570:Risk Assessment; D013997:Time Factors; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D055815:Young Adult