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Auditory brainstem implant part II: subjective assessment of functional outcome
Minoo Lenarz1, Cordula Matthies, Anke Lesinski-Schiedat
1Department of Otolaryngology, Medical University of Hannover, Germany. lenarz@hno.mh-hannover.de
Unlabelled:
OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to present the patients' recommendations and judgments about their hearing and communication abilities with the help of the auditory brainstem implant.
Study Design:
Prospective study.
Setting:
Tertiary referral center.
Patients And Methods:
This evaluation was based on the data obtained by the self-administered questionnaires designed for the European Auditory Brainstem Implant Multicenter Clinical Trial. Eleven patients who had used their auditory brainstem implant for a minimum of 6 months to a maximum of 41 months were evaluated with the help of these questionnaires.
Results:
All the patients had used their implant on a regular daily basis for an average of 13 hours per day. None of them experienced any side effects during the daily use of the device. Nine patients (82%) used their auditory brainstem implant in both quiet and noisy surroundings. The most common cause of disturbance was a noisy surrounding. All the patients were able to distinguish speech from environmental sounds. The role of the auditory brainstem implant in differentiating various environmental sounds was considered to be very useful by 9 patients (82%). As an adjuvant to lip-reading, the auditory brainstem implant was considered most useful for understanding speech in quiet surroundings.
Discussion And Conclusion:
It was concluded that the auditory brainstem implant is an effective support for receiving and, to some degree, differentiating environmental sounds, and that as an adjuvant to lip-reading, it enhances speech perception, especially in quiet surroundings. A comparison between the results of this study and the results of the audiologic tests presented in Part I of this study (published earlier) revealed that patient satisfaction was not directly correlated with the results of the objective auditory tests. In general, patients' judgments of their individual hearing and communication abilities usually rated higher than could have been predicted by the objective audiometric data.
