Advantages of bimodal stimulation compared to unilateral cochlear implant use in children with hearing loss

Abstract

Introduction Children with a cochlear implant (CI) in one ear and have usable residual hearing in the contralateral ear are candidates for bimodal hearing. By using a hearing aid (HA) in the nonimplanted ear, children can benefit from binaural hearing advantages and auditory deprivation is prevented. The present study aimed to determine the bimodal stimulation advantages in children, especially its effect on speech recognition ability and discover the effect of some factors on bimodal hearing. Materials and methods In this study, the participants were 42 CI children age ranged from 5 to 12 years old who used a HA in their contralateral nonimplanted ear for 6 months at least. The parents of the children signed the informed consent. Early speech perception in Arabic (ESP) test, the developed Arabic word in noise test and Aided audiometry were compared in bimodal fitting condition and CI condition. Results and discussion There was a great improvement in both ESP test scores and word in noise test scores in case of bimodal condition over CI alone condition. While on aided sound field audiometry test, there was no statistically significant improvement in the aided tonal threshold between bimodal and CI alone aided threshold. Factors such as implant age, regularity of HA usage, and amount of residual hearing in the contralateral ear were not affect benefits of bimodal hearing. Conclusion Bimodal hearing improves speech perception for children more than monaural hearing with a CI.