Evaluation of the high-resolution speech coding strategy for the Clarion CII cochlear implant system

Four postlinguistically deafened adults were implanted with the Clarion CII cochlear implant with the HiFocus II electrode in an evaluation of performance with a new speech coding strategy (high resolution) compared with current speech coding strategies (multiple pulsatile sampler, continuous interleaved sampling, and simultaneous analog stimulation). These strategies were implemented in the Platinum speech processor from Advanced Bionics Corporation (Sylmar, CA). Postoperatively, subjects were fitted with the traditional coding strategies and over the first month were allowed to determine their strategy of choice. This strategy was used to evaluate open-set speech recognition performance at 1 month and 3 months postfitting. At 3 months postfitting, subjects were reprogrammed with the high-resolution strategy. They returned for speech recognition testing at 1 month and 3 months postfitting with this strategy. Performance was significantly better with the high-resolution strategy for all four subjects, particularly when listening to speech in background noise. This finding was in agreement with their strong preference for the high-resolution strategy, and all four patients continue to use the high-resolution strategy.