Cochlear implantation in Thailand

This article evaluates and compares the benefits of a House/3M single channel cochlear implant or a Nucleus 22-channel cochlear implant on speech recognition in Thai-speaking patients. From 1986-1989, four profoundly deaf adults were implanted with the House/3M prosthesis. Since 1994, nine post-lingually deaf adults and three pre-lingually deaf children have been implanted with the Nucleus prosthesis. One case was implanted with the House/3M prosthesis and in the contralateral ear with the Nucleus prosthesis. The post-operative results were determined according to the ability to understand Thai monosyllabic, bisyllabic open-word sets and everyday sentence tests with, and without, lip reading. The scores were then compared in the House/3M users and the Nucleus users and compared between the House/3M cochlear implant and the Nucleus cochlear implant in the same user. The speech recognition scores on monosyllabic and bisyllabic open-word set demonstrated that the Nucleus users perform at a much higher level than the House/3M users. The results of four pre-lingually deaf children will be reported later after a period of auditory and speech rehabilitation.