title: Results in cochlear implanted children before 5 years of age. a long term follow up.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To assess the hearing threshold and linguistic results of cochlear implanted children aged 10 months to 5 years, when they reached the age of 12. We studied the benefits of sequential bilateral implantation.
  
  
  RESULTS
  This is an observational, descriptive, transversal study comprising 57 cochlear implanted subjects. We performed a free field tonal audiometry at 65dB SPL, speech tests and sentences in quiet and noise (SNR+10) tests. The Objective and Criterial Language Battery (BLOC) was used to assess linguistic competence, in its screening version.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Children implanted under the age of 2 and with inter-implant period less than or equal to 4 years reached better statistically significant results in disyllabic and sentences with and without noise (p=0.006) tests and in the disyllabic test with noise (p=0.045) (the hardest speech test). This suggests the acquisition of binaurality, as opposed to children implanted after this age, with inter-implant period longer than 4 years, who do not reach the same performance levels.
  
  
  RESULTS
  of language development in the group implanted at ages 10 months to 2 years are better with respect to implanted children at ages 3-5 (<0.05) in both unilateral and bilateral implanted children in relation to the age of implantation.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Children with pre-lingual deafness implanted before the age of 2, when they are 12 years old obtain more benefits in their language development and in their linguistic competence than children implanted after this age. The audiology results are better in children implanted bilaterally under the age of 2.
authors.affiliation: Hearing Loss Unit, Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Department. Complejo Hospitalario Universitario Insular Materno Infantil, Las Palmas of Gran Canaria, Spain.
authors.forename: Ángel
authors.initials: Á
authors.lastname: Ramos-Macías
authors.affiliation: Hearing Loss Unit, Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Department. Complejo Hospitalario Universitario Insular Materno Infantil, Las Palmas of Gran Canaria, Spain. Electronic address: silviaborkoski@hotmail.com.
authors.forename: Silvia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Borkoski-Barreiro
authors.affiliation: Hearing Loss Unit, Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Department. Complejo Hospitalario Universitario Insular Materno Infantil, Las Palmas of Gran Canaria, Spain.
authors.forename: Juan C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Falcón-González
authors.affiliation: Hearing Loss Unit, Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Department. Complejo Hospitalario Universitario Insular Materno Infantil, Las Palmas of Gran Canaria, Spain.
authors.forename: Daniel Pérez
authors.initials: DP
authors.lastname: Plasencia
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D001299:Audiometry; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D019929:Cochlear Implantation; D003054:Cochlear Implants; D003638:Deafness / Q000601:surgery*; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007804:Language Development; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D059629:Signal-To-Noise Ratio; D013067:Speech Perception; D013997:Time Factors
keywords: Children's Cochlear implant; Language development; Sequential cochlear implants