Trends and outcomes in the Manchester adult cochlear implant series

The adult cochlear implant programme in Manchester was established in 1988, initially using funding obtained from the HEAR (Help Ear and Allied Research: charity number: 519784) charity before government resources became available in the mid‐1990s. Manchester was the first centre in the UK to implant multichannel devices on a regular basis. To date, over 250 adults have been implanted, including nine bilateral and eight deaf–blind patients.1 All the patients have a postlingual onset of severe‐profound hearing loss; 73% (n = 175) of the implants performed used a Nucleus multichannel implant and 24% (n = 58) used a Medel multichannel implant. In addition, the team has implanted three Medel single channel devices, two Ineraid devices and one Clarion High Focus II device. This study is a retrospective analysis of the trends and outcomes in implant fitting during the first 14 years (1988–2002) of the programme. The paper describes the patient demographics and audiological complications for 240 implantations performed on 214 patients. Speech perception outcomes are reported for a subset of the patients. The average score for the Bench, Kowal, Bamford sentence test at the post‐18‐month stage of implant use is 66% and for Arthur Boothroyd words 53%. Trends in the series are analysed with respect to the change in criteria for adult implantation, the move towards bilateral implantation and the rate of uptake of cochlear implants by different ethnic groups.