[Language comprehension by children with profound congenital deafness after cochlear implant]

The consequences of profound deafness on oral language development in children are drastic and well-known. Modern multichannel cochlear implant (CI) has been proven to enhance speech production skills in prelingually deaf children. Speech production skills, however, are known not to be a reliable reflection of oral language competence as a whole. Language is an acquired common code in a specific group, enabling exchange of ideas, feelings and knowledge. In humans, speech is one of the channels conveying language. Assessing language development in CI children is more difficult than simply assessing speech production skills. Many factors may contribute to a poor or an excellent outcome, making it difficult to compare groups of children wearing or not wearing CI. The present study compared receptive language levels in paired matched children from CI and non-CI groups. The main conclusion of this study is that language comprehension scores grow significantly higher over time post-surgery in CI than in paired-matched non-CI children, despite better initial pure tone audiometric thresholds of the latter.