Categories of Auditory Performance and Speech Intelligibility Ratings in Prelingually Deaf Children With Bilateral...

Purpose The aim of the current study was to review all pediatric cases with congenital deafness who underwent bilateral implantation in our center. Specifically, auditory performance and speech intelligibility ratings were compared across children based on their mode of bilateral stimulation (simultaneous or sequential implantation). Method A retrospective chart review design was used in this study. A total of 46 congenitally deaf children were included. Children ranged in age between 2 and 8 years, with a mean of 3 years 7 months. Participants were divided into 2 groups: those who received their bilateral implant simultaneously and those who received them sequentially. Categories of Auditory Performance (CAP; Archbold, Lutman, & Marshall, 1995 ) scores and Speech Intelligibility Rating (SIR; M. C. Allen, Nikolopoulos, & O'Donoghue, 1998 ) scores were used to measure their performance. Results Children scored an average of 4.1 (±1.6) on the CAP Scale and 1.6 (±1) on the SIR Scale. Results showed that children who received their implants simultaneously scored relatively higher on the CAP Scale than those with sequential implants. However, there were no differences between the 2 groups in SIR scores. These 2 outcome measures were not correlated with age at implantation. Conclusion The current study demonstrated that simultaneous implantation could potentially improve audiologic outcome.