Cochlear implant performance in senior citizens

Cochlear implants are indicated for elderly patients with severe-to-profound hearing loss (sensorineural hearing loss >/=70 dB). Their use has been limited, possibly by the misconception that elderly patients will perform poorly. To document the performance of older adults (> or =65 years old), we undertook a retrospective analysis of our postlingually deafened adult patients who underwent implantation with the CLARION Multi-Strategy Cochlear Implant and underwent formal audiologic analysis (sentence recognition [Central Institute for the Deaf, CID] and monosyllabic word recognition (consonant-noun-consonant, CNC)). Both younger (n = 20; mean age = 46.9 years) and older (n = 16; mean age = 71.5 years) adults showed statistically significant increases in CID and CNC scores after cochlear implantation. No statistically significant difference could be detected in operative time, anesthesia time, length of hospitalization, or CID or CNC scores between the two age groups. We conclude that age should not be a criterion for deciding who should receive cochlear implants.