The side of cochlear implantation and speech intelligibility in pediatric and adult cochlear implantees

Abstract

Abstract Background: A cochlear implant (CI) is an auditory prosthesis that stimulates the primary auditory nerve fibers electrically to elicit sound perception in individuals with severe-to-profound sensorineural hearing impairments. Speech intelligibility is a joint product of a speaker and a listener and can provide a close approximation of an individual’s everyday communication status, and cochlear implants can facilitate the development of speech and language skills in prelingually deaf patients. Aim: The aim of this work was to study whether there is an advantage of one ear in the improvement of speech intelligibility in pediatric and adult cochlear-implanted patients. Study design: A cross-sectional study to assess the speech intelligibility of right and left cochlear-implanted patients. Patients and methods: The study included 50 cochlear-implanted patients (24 male and 26 female): 25 of the patients were prelingual and 25 were postlingual. Twenty-six of the patients were implanted on the right ear and 24 were implanted on the left ear. Speech intelligibility assessment was conducted using the Arabic Speech Intelligibility test. This Arabic Speech Intelligibility test is meant to be an objective measure as the examiner does not have to evaluate how a word was said. Results: The results revealed that there was no significant difference between the speech intelligibility percentage regarding the onset of deafness (prelingual or postlingual), the sex and the duration of therapy, but there was a significant difference between the speech intelligibility percentage in right-ear-implanted and left-ear-implanted patients, with marked advantage for the implanted right ear. Conclusion and recommendation: Right-ear cochlear implantation has an advantage over left-ear implantation regarding the speech intelligibility. Hence, in case of bilateral profound deafness of the same degree with no anatomical complications in either of the ears, it is recommended to choose the right ear for cochlear implantation.