Multiple-channel cochlear implants for children [Abstract]

The children's program at The University of Melbourne Cochlear Implant Clinic involves a team of ENT surgeons, audiologists, speech pathologists and a teacher of the deaf. After a child is considered suitable for implantation, he/she enters a preoperative program for a minimum of three months. During this time, there is counselling of parents, liaison with teachers, weekly training in speech production, language and speech perception and baseline assessments in these three areas. The child continues to receive weekly training and regular assessments in the postoperative period. Twenty children have been implanted in Melbourne with the 22-electrode cochlear implant to date. Formal results have been collected over time for nine of these children. Five children (aged 6.0 to 14.8 years at implantation) have known open-set speech recognition through hearing. Four of these five children were implanted before adolescence and the fifth, who had a deteriorating loss, was implanted during adolescence. The remaining children who did not demonstrate open-set recognition, were implanted during adolescence after a long duration of profound deafness. Postoperative performance on closed-set speech perception tests was better that preoperative performance for the group of five children with open-set recognition. There were also improvements in speech and language assessments.