Two-Year Outcomes of Cochlear Implant Use for Children With Unilateral Hearing Loss: Benefits and Comparison to Children With Normal Hearing.
Lisa R Park, Margaret T Dillon, Emily Buss and 1 others
PMID 36879386WHAT IT FOUND
Cochlear implants significantly improved word recognition, listening in noise, and sound localization in children with single-sided deafness over two years.
However, these children still performed worse than peers with normal hearing, especially when noise came from their better-hearing side.
Key findings
01Word recognition in the implanted ear improved significantly over time, stabilizing around 6 months, with a mean score of 58% after 24 months.
02Listening in noise and sound localization improved with the implant, but performance remained significantly poorer than that of children with normal hearing.
03The study found no evidence that implanting children at a younger age (within the 3.5 to 6.5 year range) led to better outcomes compared to older children in this cohort.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The age range of participants was narrow (3.5 to 6.5 years), limiting the ability to detect age effects. Nearly half the participants had an unknown onset of deafness, preventing analysis of the impact of duration of deafness. The control group of children with normal hearing was tested at a single time point, not longitudinally. Testing the SSD group with their implant 'off' may not accurately reflect their unaided performance if they had never received an implant, due to potential learning effects from binaural exposure.
Declared interests
The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the University of North Carolina. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that cochlear implantation restores normal spatial hearing or that earlier implantation within the preschool years guarantees better outcomes. The study shows significant improvement but persistent deficits compared to normal hearing, and no benefit for younger age at activation within the studied range.