Auditory and speech outcomes of cochlear implantation in patients with Waardenburg syndrome: a meta-analysis

This study aims to assess the potential efficacy of cochlear implantation as a treatment for patients with Waardenburg syndrome (WS) and to guide clinical work by comparing the effect of auditory and speech recovery after cochlear implantation in patients with WS and non-WS. PubMed, the Cochrane Library, CNKI, and Wanfang Data were sources for retrieving literature on cochlear implantation in WS, and clinical data meeting the inclusion criteria were meta-analyzed using RevMan5.41. A total of nine articles were included in this study, including 132 patients with WS and 815 patients in the control group. Meta-analysis showed that there are no significant differences in the scores for categories of audit performance (CAP), speech intelligibility rating (SIR), and parents' evaluation of aural/oral performance of children (PEACH) between the WS group and the control group. Cochlear implantation demonstrates comparable auditory and speech recovery outcomes for WS patients and non-WS patients.