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Use of the telephone in prelingually deaf children with a multichannel cochlear implant
M Tait1, T P Nikolopoulos, S Archbold
1Department of Otolaryngology, University Hospital, Queen's Medical Center NHS Trust, Nottingham, United Kingdom.
Insights
Prelingually deaf children show significant progress in telephone use after cochlear implantation, with continued improvement observed up to five years post-surgery. A specialized telephone profile effectively monitors this progress and correlates with other speech perception tests.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric audiology
- Cochlear implant technology
- Speech perception research
Background:
- Cochlear implantation is a key intervention for prelingually deaf children.
- Assessing functional communication skills like telephone use is crucial for evaluating implant success.
- Longitudinal data on telephone use in this population is limited.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the progress of telephone use in prelingually deaf children following cochlear implantation.
- To determine if telephone use skills plateau within five years after implantation.
- To validate a specific telephone use assessment profile against established speech perception tests.
Main Methods:
- A prospective study involving 150 prelingually deaf children (under 7 years at implantation) at a UK pediatric cochlear implant center.
- Telephone use was assessed using a specifically designed profile over a 5-year follow-up period.
- Regression analysis correlated telephone profile scores with Iowa sentence test and connected discourse tracking outcomes.
Main Results:
- Prelingually deaf children demonstrated significant, ongoing progress in telephone use, without reaching a plateau by the 5-year mark.
- The telephone profile scores showed strong, statistically significant correlations with Iowa sentence test and connected discourse tracking results (r=0.47-0.79, p<0.0001).
Conclusions:
- The developed telephone profile is a valuable, sensitive, and easily administered tool for monitoring telephone use progress in pediatric cochlear implant recipients.
- The profile's outcomes align well with established speech perception tests, supporting its clinical utility.
- Cochlear implantation facilitates substantial gains in telephone communication skills for prelingually deaf children.
Objective:
To assess progress in the use of the telephone in a group of prelingually deaf children after cochlear implantation.
Setting:
Tertiary referral pediatric cochlear implant center in the U. K.
Study Design:
A prospective study was undertaken on a consecutive group of 150 congenital and prelingually deaf children up to 5 years after implantation. The study group was confined to prelingually deaf children aged less than 7 years at the time of implantation. No child was lost to follow-up, and there were no exclusions from the study. At the time of the study, 129 children had reached the 1-year stage, and 91, 68, 40, and 23 had reached the 2-, 3-, 4-, and 5-year intervals, respectively.
Methods:
A specifically designed profile was used to assess the telephone use of the implanted children. Regression analysis was used to assess the correlation between the results of the telephone profile with the outcomes of the Iowa sentence test and connected discourse tracking.
Results:
After implantation, prelingually deaf children showed significant progress in telephone use over time, not reaching a plateau at the 5-year interval (median score 27 with maximum score available 34). The results of the telephone profile showed significant correlations with the other tests of speech perception (correlation coefficients from 0.47 to 0.79, all statistically significant p < 0.0001).
Conclusion:
The telephone profile provided a useful method of monitoring children's telephone use. The profile was easily administered, and it was sensitive in assessing the progress of prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants. Outcomes from the profile were highly correlated with results from other widely used closed- and open-set tests.