Audiological management and performance of adult cochlear-implant patients

We review the signal-processing strategies of three of the most common cochlear implants in use today, the single-channel House, the multichannel Nucleus, and the Ineraid devices. The results of 65 postlinguistically-deafened patients tested at The University of Iowa are reviewed. The tests include everyday sound, accent, word and sentence recognition, as well as noise/voice differentiation. For all tests, patients with the Nucleus and Ineraid cochlear implants outperformed those with the House implant. In general, selection criteria should focus on comparing the performance of Patients who have already received an implant. Prelinguistically-deafened adults are typically not good cochlear-impact candidates. Cochlear-implant teams should be aware of the enormous time commitment for testing and rehabilitation of these patients, and be prepared to handle frequent implant breakdowns. Nevertheless, cochlear-implant patients have been helped significantly be these devices.