Borderline Pediatric Cochlear Implant Candidates: Preoperative and Postoperative Results

An expansion of currently recommended selection criteria for cochlear implantation is strongly supported by postoperative evaluations of those children (N = 13, aged 5-12 at surgery) who received cochlear implants at U Miami Ear Instit between 1991 & 1998 & exceeded one or more of four preoperative criteria: (1) unaided pure tone average less than 90 dB HL, (2) aided pure tone average 35 dB HL or better, (3) speech awareness threshold 35 dB HL or better, &/or (4) open-set word/sentence scores above chance. Preoperative scores for each S are compared with most recent scores in (1-4), including the Phonetically Balanced-Kindergarten wordlist & the Glendonald Auditory Screening Procedure or Common Phrases Sentences; results reflect 3 months to 4 years of cochlear implant use & include speech reception thresholds, which could not be elicited preoperatively in most Ss. Analyses of variance show significant improvement in pure tone average, word recognition, & sentence recognition; all Ss displayed a speech reception threshold in the 25-45 dB range. 1 Table, 7 References. J. Hitchcock