Aural Rehabilitation of Children with Cochlear Implants

Abstract

Aural Rehabilitation of Children with Cochlear Implants Sung-Hye Park and Dong-Jin Lee Hearing Center, Department of Otolaryngology, Sacred-Heart Hospital, Hallym University, Anyang, Korea Congenitally deaf children who receive cochlear implants at a young age have the potential to achieve nearly normal language development. As the developmental effects of a profound hearing loss are multiple, cochlear implants have been applied to ever younger children in an attempt to promote a more normal level of developmental learning through audition. However, rehabilitaion therapists must realize that intensive and long-duration auditory-verbal education is required postoperatively to achieve this goal. Two children with auditory rehabilitation for about 5 months after the operation were evaluated to examine how auditory perception would improve. Both cases showed benefits of aural rehabilitation. After the cochlea implant surgical operation, aural rehabilitation is reguired and education for natural language development should be run parallel accordingly.