[Hearing quality with different cochlear implants]

The rehabilitation of completely or profoundly deaf patients with a cochlear implant shows different results in their ability to communicate. These differences are certainly based upon the different kind and degree of the disease or damage leading to the loss of hearing. But as CI-systems are also different, an attempt was made to find out the CI-system offering the best chance for an optimal communication ability. Anonymously answered questionnaires of 45 and 193 patients in 2 series were statistically analysed. In both the 95% intervals of confidence for numbers of patients with 2 different CIs who could mainly communicate without additional optical or electronic help did not overlap. For Nucleus 62% and for MED-EL 83% of patients obtained a mainly free communication ability. The difference was statistically significant.