[Hearing and speech discrimination scores of prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants]

The goal of this study is to report mean values of speech perception performance in prelingually deaf children who received a Combi 40/40+ cochlear implant. Thirty-one patients were included in the study. The time span ranged over 3 years, during which time the Evaluation of Auditory Responses to Speech (EARS) test battery was used in the children. The EARS battery contains 4 measures of closed-set speech perception and 3 open-set tests. The mean test results exhibited steady improvement in all parts of the EARS test battery, even up to 3 years post-implantation. The mean preoperative scores were 0.3%, increasing to 92.3% at 36 months post-implantation for the best children. Results for the closed-set testing measures were most encouraging, with some children reaching fairly high levels of speech perception and achieving scores as high as 98.7% at the 36-month evaluation. The congenitally and prelingually deaf children in our study showed continuous improvement in both closed and open set speech perception following cochlear implantation, although individual variations in performance were noted.