Objective approach to audiometry in the pediatric implanted patient

Abstract

Nowadays the only clinical test that allows to know the hearing thresholds of the implanted patient is the audiometry. However audiometry needs of a trained patient and its collaboration; this is not easy to get in the pediatric implanted patient due to its age and its lack of other communication resources. Audiologist employs audiometry results to adjust C/M and T level of the intracochlear electrodes to fulfill implanted patient particular needs. The aim of this study is to explore the possibility to obtain the pediatric cochlear implant patients audiometry through an objective test called Electric Cochlear Response (ECR). For this purpose patient audiometry was compared to those hearing threshold obtained by using the ECR test. ECR and Audiometry tests were obtained in 16 cochlear implanted patients, between 1 and 9 years old. Patient was seated inside an audiometric booth in an armchair for audiometry or asleep lying down in a stretcher for ECR test. In order to compare both test results, audiometry data points were matched with data points considered in the ECR test. The existence of a statistically significant difference between both thresholds was determined by means of a paired t –student test. There was no significant difference between ECR and audiometry thresholds. Average differences were less than 5 dB. These results suggest the possibility to obtain reliable patient audiometry estimation without patient subjectivity based just on an ECR test.