[Rehabilitation programs for patients with cochlear implants as a function of acquired experience in logopedics for...

Rehabilitation of patients after cochlear implant surgery should be planified along the same basic principles as those that have been envolved for the adaptation of patients to a classical hearing aid or acoustic prosthesis. When this is adapted to a patient with a sensorineural hearing loss, the quality of hearing differs from that of normal hearing because the pathological inner ear introduces distorsions. The patient therefore has to be trained to equate the new auditory sensations with those he had previously, which is basically the same situation as with a cochlear implant. Some profoundly or totally deaf patients are fitted with vibro-tactile aids and they also have to be trained to make use of these new sensations in a meaningful way for an aid to speech understanding. For the above reasons the term "cochlear prosthesis" is considered particularly adequate. It also has the advantage of playing down the surgical aspect of this new technique, often overemphasized by the media and creating exaggerated emotional involvement of the patients. If the above facts are recognized, one should entrust the rehabilitation of patients fitted with cochlear prostheses to logopeds (speech therapists) well trained in the habilitation and prosthetic adaptation of profoundly deaf children. Only they have the expertise necessary to devise and apply a program founded upon experience. This will help avoid the pitfalls into which several surgically directed cochlear implant teams are currently falling. One of these is to design a training program in function of the tests meant to measure the patients' new capacities.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)