Slim Modiolar Electrode Placement in Candidates for Electroacoustic Stimulation

Area of Science:

• Otolaryngology
• Neuroscience
• Biomedical Engineering

Background:

• Electroacoustic stimulation (EAS) combines hearing aid technology with cochlear implantation for hearing loss.
• Slim modiolar electrode arrays are designed to preserve residual hearing in EAS candidates.
• Assessing hearing preservation and speech performance is crucial for EAS outcomes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate hearing preservation rates in patients receiving EAS with a slim modiolar electrode.
• To determine speech perception performance in these patients over time.
• To analyze the impact of residual hearing loss on performance.

Main Methods:

• Adult patients meeting FDA criteria for EAS and implanted with slim modiolar electrodes (CI532 or CI632) were included.
• Hearing preservation was defined by low-frequency pure-tone average (LFPTA) thresholds.
• Speech perception was assessed using Consonant-Nucleus-Consonant (CNC) word scores and AzBio sentences in noise.

Main Results:

• Early hearing preservation was achieved in 71.7% of patients.
• At one year, 34.7% retained low-frequency thresholds ≤80 dB.
• Speech perception scores (CNC) were similar between patients with and without preserved low-frequency hearing.
• Loss of residual hearing did not negatively impact speech perception performance.

Conclusions:

• Slim modiolar arrays demonstrate favorable early hearing preservation for EAS.
• Speech performance is not significantly affected by the presence or absence of preserved low-frequency hearing.
• The loss of residual hearing over time does not diminish speech perception outcomes in patients with this electrode array.