Cochlear implant results: a comparison of live-voice and videotaped tests

The Cambridge Cochlear Implant Programme has so far implanted the Ineraid multichannel cochlear implant in 16 profoundly deaf adult patients; there has been a 9-month or longer follow-up period with these patients. We have evaluated these patients by open-set Bamford-Kowal-Bench (BKB) Standard Sentence List testing in two different delivery strategies, live-speaker testing by the same speaker and high-resolution videotaped testing. The performance in lip reading both before and 9 months after implantation has been tested, as well as performance with the implant alone and with the implant in conjunction with lip reading at the 9-month stage. We have compared the performance in these two delivery strategies and have found a significantly better performance in the live-speaker tests that is attributable to slower and perhaps more sympathetic delivery. We have also found evidence of a ceiling effect in the performance of the implant with lip reading in the live-speaker mode and, of greater importance, a floor effect in the performance of the implant alone with the videotaped test. These results and the implications for a complementary role of these two test-delivery modes are discussed.