Prelingual Deaf Children Treated With Cochlear Implant: Monitoring Performance With Percentiles

To develop a percentile ranking system driven by speech recognition data obtained from different groups of patients treated with a cochlear implant to serve as a tool to monitor the progress of these patients.

Prospective study.

Tertiary referral center.

Diagnosed with a bilateral, profound sensorineural hearing loss treated with a unilateral cochlear implant.

Diagnostic.

Six different percentiles (p) were classified taking into account the correlation between speech recognition outcome scores and age at implantation, with reference to the onset of hearing loss.

Four hundred sixteen prelingual patients were included. These subjects were divided into subgroups depending on age at implantation.Prelingual group, from the fifth year after implantation, p50 centered on the following percentages of correct words in each subgroup: 100, 94.6, 91.4, 91.0, 79.2, and 63.1% in children implanted under 12 months, 1, 2, 3, 4 to 6, 7 to 10 years, respectively. After a 12-year follow-up, a significant negative correlation between age at implantation and speech recognition was observed in both prelinguals (Rhos=-0.578, p<0.001).

A percentile system was developed to monitor the postimplant progress of prelingual deaf implanted patients, with potential applications in patient follow-up and handling circumstances that may deteriorate results.