Late Receipt of a Second Cochlear Implant: Better Late than Never?

The present study explored the incremental benefits of late receipt of a second cochlear implant (CI) by examining various aspects of educational, cognitive and social-emotional functioning among college-age CI users. Secondary analyses were conducted on data from seven studies that had compared deaf students who were active CI users, deaf students who had never used CIs and hearing students; information concerning unilateral or bilateral CI use had been collected but was not analysed previously. The seven studies provided for comparisons on four dozen dimensions including executive function, world knowledge, visual-spatial ability, academic achievement and quality of life. Ages of first/only cochlear implantation did not differ significantly in any of the comparisons, nor did the groups differ significantly on most of the outcome measures across cognitive and social-emotional domains. The findings consistently indicated that while cognitive and social-emotional differences might be apparent between samples of unilateral and bilateral CI users during earlier childhood, they were not evident in this group of CI users who had reached college-age. Limitations of this study related to the nature of the participant samples indicate the need for further research on long-term benefits of bilateral implantation.