Effects of Multimodal Acoustic Therapy for Children With Cochlear Implants: A Randomized Clinical Trial

Area of Science:

• Audiology
• Biomedical Engineering
• Digital Health

Background:

• Cochlear implants (CI) are vital for hearing restoration but often require supplementary auditory rehabilitation.
• Existing rehabilitation methods may lack accessibility and engagement for pediatric and adolescent users.
• Smartphone-based interventions present a scalable solution for auditory training.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the efficacy of a novel smartphone-based auditory rehabilitation method, Multimodal Acoustic Therapy (MAT).
• To assess MAT's impact on hearing outcomes in cochlear implant (CI) users, specifically focusing on music and speech perception.
• To determine if integrating linguistic and nonlinguistic auditory training enhances rehabilitation effectiveness.

Main Methods:

• A double-blind, active-controlled randomized clinical trial involving 33 CI users (aged 8-20 years).
• Participants completed 8 weeks of home-based training using a smartphone application, either MAT or a control (music playlist).
• MAT incorporated structured linguistic and nonlinguistic auditory training with auditory-visual feedback; outcomes measured via music and speech perception tests.

Main Results:

• The MAT group showed significantly greater improvements in melodic contour identification (music perception) compared to the control group (p=0.010).
• Significant gains were observed in consonant identification (p=0.028), vowel identification (p=0.016), and monosyllabic word recognition (p=0.007) in the MAT group.
• The control group exhibited minimal to no improvement in these auditory perception tasks.

Conclusions:

• Multimodal Acoustic Therapy (MAT) effectively enhanced hearing outcomes in experienced pediatric and adolescent CI users.
• The study supports the use of digital therapeutics like MAT as a feasible and practical auditory rehabilitation strategy.
• MAT's integration of diverse auditory stimuli and feedback mechanisms contributes to improved CI user performance.