[The changes in the distinctness and discrimination of phonems of cochlear implants children]

Hearing impaired children do not develop oral speech in the same time with the hearing ones. Cochlear implants may change this situation. Implanted deaf children may develop oral speech but only after long speech rehabilitation. Acquisition of language skills should be assesed correctly in every patient. It is important because this therapy is quite expensive. There are many quantitative and qualitative methods used all over the world. In some cases score is calculated as percentage of correctly repeated words. Sometimes it did not reflect true level of language development. 240 people were implanted in Poznań in years 1994-2004. Two years ago, evaluation of changes in the distinctness and discrimination of phonems of cochlear implants children was begun. We found differences between standard speech audiometry and distinctness and discrimination of phonems.