Bilateral Cochlear Implantation Versus Bimodal Hearing in Patients With Functional Residual Hearing: A Within-subjects Comparison of Audiologic Performance and Quality of Life

摘要

Objective:Evaluate performance and quality of life changes after sequential bilateral cochlear implantation in patients with preoperative residual hearing functioning in a bimodal hearing configuration.Study Design:Retrospective analysis using within-subjects repeated measures design.Setting:Tertiary otologic center.Patients:Twenty-two adult patients with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss who used bimodal hearing before second cochlear implant (CI) meeting the following criteria: 1) preoperative residual hearing (80dB HL at 250Hz) in the ear to be implanted, 2) implantation with current CI technology (2013-2016), 3) consonant-nucleus-consonant (CNC) speech recognition testing in the bimodal condition preoperatively and bilateral CI condition postoperatively.Intervention:Cochlear implantation.Main Outcome Measures:CNC and AzBio sentence scores in quiet and noise (+5 SNR). Subjective measures of communication difficulty and sound quality were also administered.Results:Twenty-two patients (mean 64 yr, 68% men) were included. At an average follow-up of 11.8 months, CNC scores in the bilateral CI condition (mean 63%, standard deviation [SD]=22) were significantly better than preoperative bimodal scores with repeated measures analysis (mean 55%, SD=22) (p=0.03). AzBio scores in quiet were also higher with bilateral CI (mean 76%, SD=24) compared with bimodal listening (mean 69%, SD=29) (p=0.0007). Global abbreviated profile of hearing aid benefit (APHAB) and overall speech, spatial, and qualities of hearing (SSQ) scores exhibited significant improvement following bilateral implantation (p=0.006 for both analyses).Conclusions:For patients using a bimodal hearing configuration with substantial residual hearing in the non-CI ear, bilateral cochlear implantation yields improved audiologic performance and better subjective quality of life, irrespective of the ability to preserve acoustic hearing during the second sided implantation.