Residual speech perception and cochlear implant performance in postlingually deafened adults

This study aimed at testing the post-hoc validity of the previously reported predictive index for postoperative cochlear implant performance, based on preoperative duration of deafness, and speech reception.

Adult patients with postlingual severe to profound hearing loss, who were implanted with Cochlear Corporation CI-22 and CI-24 devices were included in this study. We studied the relationship between their postoperative word recognition scores and preoperative factors, namely, duration of deafness, and sentence recognition. We used the same predictive index reported in the previous study to predict their postoperative scores and test the model's agreement with the actual performance.

We found that postoperative performance as measured by CNC word scores had an inverse relationship with the duration of deafness, and a direct correlation with the preoperative performance on CID sentence recognition tests. A nonlinear term [Duration / (1+CID)] was shown to improve the correlation coefficient of our predictive index.

Some predictability of cochlear implant outcome is possible depending on the preoperative duration of deafness and speech recognition abilities. Preoperative residual speech recognition acts as a "trophic factor" that protects the spiral ganglion and/ or the central auditory pathways from degeneration. In other words, it improves the expected postoperative word scores.