Expectations and Experience of Children with Unilateral Cochlear Implantation: A Parental Perspective

To find out parental expectations regarding outcomes of unilateral cochlear implantation prior to surgery and experience received by them after cochlear implantation and 1 year of regular auditory verbal therapy, with respect to the communication abilities, social skills and participation. Total of 200 parents of hearing impaired children participated in the study. A closed ended questionnaire containing 13 questions were used to collect the data. The participants were instructed to complete all the questions provided based on their expectations and experiences. The descriptive statistics were used to determine the frequency and percentage. Among 200 parents, almost all (95%) of the parents expected to have improvement in all the subscale of communication abilities, social skills and participation. 68.5% of the parents experienced improvement in their child's communication abilities, such as, response to quiet sounds, repetition of words without seeing speaker's face, elimination of use of gestures, easy communication and verbal expression for needs, thoughts and feelings. 76% of the parents experienced improvement in social skills and participations, such as, good relationship with elders, siblings and peers, making friends outside the family, actively participating in the activity done by other children and easily accepted by peers in the classroom. A large number of parents met with their expectations and a small proportion of families were found to be disappointed due to high hopes and unrealistic expectation before implantation, which had adverse effect on the children's performance.