Long-Term Auditory and Speech Outcomes of Cochlear Implantation in Children with IP-I Malformation.

Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the long-term auditory and speech outcomes in children with Incomplete Partition Type I (IP-I) who underwent cochlear implantation (CI) and compared their progress to implanted children with normal cochlea.

Methods: This study tracked 17 children with IP-Ι for an average of 3.5 years post-implantation. A control group with normal cochlea was also tracked. Regular assessments, including aided hearing threshold, categories of auditory performance (CAP), and speech intelligibility rating (SIR), were conducted every 6 months for the first 2 years post-CI and annually thereafter. Speech recognition was tested for children who could cooperate with it.

Results: The aided hearing threshold of IP-I children had improved significantly from 90.51 dB HL before CI to 47.02 dB HL in the sixth-month post-CI, and it had further improved to 26.27 dB HL after more than 48 months post-CI. Meanwhile, their median CAP scores had improved from 0 to 6.5 and median SIR scores from 1 to 4 over the same period. There was no significant difference in the improvement of mean aided hearing thresholds over time between the IP-I and control groups postoperation. However, IP-I children showed slower progress in CAP and SIR scores and had lower recognition rates for monosyllabic and disyllabic words compared with the control group.

Conclusion: Children with IP-Ι showed continuous but slower improvement in auditory and speech capabilities post-CI compared to those with normal cochlea. Their speech recognition ability was also inferior.

Level of evidence: III Laryngoscope, 2025.