title: Telephone Usage and Cochlear Implant: Auditory Training Benefits.
abstract: Introduction Difficulties with telephone use by adult users of cochlear implants (CIs) are reported as a limitation in daily life. Studies to improve the speech understanding of CI users on the telephone are scarce in the Brazilian scientific literature. Objective To develop and evaluate the effectiveness of a training program of auditory abilities on the telephone for an adult CI user. Resumed Report The subject was a 55-year-old woman with a degree in accounting who used a CI for 24 months. The program consisted of three stages: pretraining evaluation, eight sessions of advanced auditory abilities training, and post-training evaluation. Auditory abilities with CI were evaluated before and after training in three conditions: sound field, telephone with the speech processor in the microphone function, and telephone with the speech processor in the telecoil function. Speech recognition was assessed by three different lists: one with monosyllabic and dissyllabic words, another with nonsense syllables, and another one with sentences. The Client Oriented Scale of Improvement (COSI) was used to assess whether the needs established by the CI user in everyday telephone use situations improved after training. The auditory abilities training resulted in a relevant improvement in the percentage of correct answers in speech tests both in the telephone use conditions and in the sound field condition. Conclusion The results obtained with the COSI inventory indicated a performance improvement in all situations presented at the beginning of the program.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiotherapy, Speech-Language Pathology & Audiology and Occupational Therapy, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
authors.forename: Aline Faria de
authors.initials: AF
authors.lastname: Sousa
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiotherapy, Speech-Language Pathology & Audiology and Occupational Therapy, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
authors.forename: Ana Claudia Martinho de
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Carvalho
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiotherapy, Speech-Language Pathology & Audiology and Occupational Therapy, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
authors.forename: Maria Ines Vieira
authors.initials: MI
authors.lastname: Couto
authors.affiliation: Department of Otolaryngology, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
authors.forename: Robinson Koji
authors.initials: RK
authors.lastname: Tsuji
authors.affiliation: Department of Otolaryngology, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
authors.forename: Maria Valéria Schmidt
authors.initials: MV
authors.lastname: Goffi-Gomez
authors.affiliation: Department of Otolaryngology, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
authors.forename: Ricardo Ferreira
authors.initials: RF
authors.lastname: Bento
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiotherapy, Speech-Language Pathology & Audiology and Occupational Therapy, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
authors.forename: Carla Gentile
authors.initials: CG
authors.lastname: Matas
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiotherapy, Speech-Language Pathology & Audiology and Occupational Therapy, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
authors.forename: Debora Maria
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Befi-Lopes
keywords: adult; cochlear implants; hearing loss; rehabilitation; telephone