Hearing-impaired individuals with severe to
profound hearing loss and poor speech understanding who possess some
residual hearing in one ear may experience significant communication
benefit from a cochlear implant even if it is placed in the worse-hearing
ear, a Johns Hopkins study suggests.
There is growing evidence that the amount of hearing in an ear prior
to surgery is unrelated to a patient’s ability to interpret speech
using an implant, says Howard W. Francis, M.D., lead author of the
study and an associate professor of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery.
Therefore, the better-hearing ear could be saved for the continued
use of a hearing aid or future technology to complement a cochlear
implant, Francis says.
Reporting in the August issue of the journal Ear
and Hearing, Francis
and colleagues compared patients with no residual hearing, patients
with some residual hearing in one ear and patients with some residual
hearing in both ears. The patients’ ability to interpret sounds
and speech was measured before and after cochlear implant surgery.
Patients with residual hearing in one or both ears prior to surgery scored
significantly higher on the speech perception tests following surgery,
even when the implanted ear was profoundly deaf prior to surgery. The
researchers also noted that patients’ ability to interpret speech
in a noisy environment increased dramatically over time in proportion
with the amount of residual hearing in the non-implanted ear.
“
In cases where even a small amount of hearing ability remains in
one ear, the central nervous system is better able to integrate auditory
information with a cochlear implant, and equally so from either ear," Francis
says.
“ This speaks to the brain’s circuitry and its ability
to interpret electrical signals generated by the implant even in the
presumably more degenerated ear.”
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was first published by Johns Hopkins Medicine
on 31st August 2005.
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