Bimodal benefits in Mandarin-speaking cochlear implant users with contralateral residual acoustic hearing

The present study aimed to measure bimodal benefits and probe their underlying mechanisms in Mandarin-speaking cochlear implant (CI) subjects who had contralateral residual acoustic hearing.

The subjects recognised words or phonemes from the Mandarin Lexical Neighborhood Test in noise at a 10-dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) with acoustic stimulation, electric stimulation or the combined bimodal stimulation.

Thirteen Mandarin-speaking subjects wore a CI in one ear and had residual acoustic hearing in the contralateral ear. Six of the subjects (5.2-13.0 years) had pre-lingual onset of severe hearing loss, and seven of them (8.6-45.8 years) had post-lingual onset of severe hearing loss.

Both groups of subjects produced a significant bimodal benefit in word recognition in noise. Consonants and tones accounted for the bimodal benefit. The bimodal integration efficiency was negatively correlated with the duration of deafness in the implanted ear for vowel recognition but positively correlated with CI or bimodal experience for consonant recognition.

The present results support preservation of residual acoustic hearing, early cochlear implantation and continuous use of bimodal hearing for subjects who have significant residual hearing in the non-implanted ear.