Comparing implants with hearing aids in profoundly deaf children

Speech perception, speech production, and spoken language skills of 13 age-matched groups of prelingually deaf children, all enrolled in the same educational setting, were compared. Each group consisted of three children, two with hearing aids but different degrees of hearing loss (pure-tone average > 100 dB HL and pure-tone average between 90 and 100 dB HL) and one who had used a Nucleus multichannel implant (Cochlear Corp., Englewood, Colo.) for 3 years. The implanted group exhibited significantly better performance in all areas than aided children with greater than 100 dB losses. However, children with hearing losses in the 90 to 100 dB range who received hearing aids and auditory oral instruction at an early age performed just as well as children who had used implants for 3 years.