Cochlear Implant User Affect and Reported Quality of Life.

Area of Science:

• Audiology
• Psychology
• Health Outcomes Research

Background:

• Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) like the Cochlear Implant Quality of Life (CIQOL) instruments are increasingly used to assess cochlear implant outcomes.
• The self-reported nature of PROMs necessitates understanding how psychosocial factors, such as affect, influence responses.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate changes in affect and CIQOL domain scores over time in adult cochlear implant recipients.
• To determine the association between affect (positive and negative) and CIQOL domain scores.

Main Methods:

• A prospective longitudinal cohort study followed adult cochlear implant candidates for 1 year.
• Data collected included speech recognition, CIQOL-35 Profile, and Positive Affect and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) at baseline, 3, 6, and 12 months post-activation.
• Statistical analyses included Cohen d for effect sizes and multivariable repeated-measure mixed-effect linear models.

Main Results:

• All CIQOL-35 domains showed improvement from pre-implantation to 12 months post-activation.
• Positive affect scores increased, while negative affect scores decreased over the study period.
• Both positive and negative affect were significantly associated with CIQOL domain scores, especially in the social and emotional domains.

Conclusions:

• Patient affect is associated with cochlear implant quality of life scores, particularly impacting social and emotional well-being.
• Despite statistical associations, the observed changes in affect were unlikely to lead to clinically significant improvements in CIQOL domain scores.