Simultaneous Analog Stimulation Pilot Pediatric Study

To investigate the merits of switching child users of the Clarion Multistrategy cochlear implant from the unipolar Continuous Interleaved Sampler (CIS) processing strategy to the bipolar Simultaneous Analog Stimulation (SAS) strategy, a pilot study followed the results of refitting a group of children (N = 22, aged 4-13) on the first day of a 5-day rehabilitation visit. As 27% of Ss could not be fitted with SAS due to excessively high most comfortable loudness (M) levels, these preliminary findings suggest that an M level below 375 clinical units (microamperes) in CIS is an indication for fitting SAS. Another 23% of Ss rejected SAS within four weeks, whereas the remaining 50% continued to prefer SAS; the latter's mean scores on closed- & open-set speech recognition tests after four weeks of SAS use matched their scores before refitting. 1 Figure, 3 References. J. Hitchcock