Impact of unilateral vs. bilateral evaluation on cochlear implant candidacy

Abstract

Background

The indication criteria for cochlear implantation differ considerably across regions.

Objectives

To estimate the effects of different candidacy criteria on the number of cochlear implant (CI) candidates.

Methods

We analysed a very large clinical audiological database comprising pure-tone thresholds and speech-audiometric data in order to identify CI candidates on the basis of different audiometric candidacy criteria. In particular, we simulated the effects of three different CI candidacy criteria.

Results

The bilateral evaluation of CI candidacy has the strongest influence on the number of potential CI candidates. Additionally, the cut-off criteria for middle-ear implants have a large effect on numbers of candidates when air conduction has deteriorated.

Conclusions and Significance: Expanding the indication criteria opens up the possibility of improving the accurate identification of individual cases suitable for cochlear-implant provision.

Chinese Abstract

背景

不同地区人工耳蜗植入的适合症标准差异很大。

目的

评估不同候选标准对人工耳蜗植入(CI)候选人数量的影响。

方法

我们分析了一个庞大的临床听力学数据库, 其中包括纯音阈值和语音听力数据, 以便根据不同的听力候选标准识别 CI 候选者。我们尤其模拟了三种不同 CI 候选标准的影响。

结果

CI候选资格的双边评估对潜在候选人人数具有最大的影响。 此外, 中耳植入的截止标准对气导恶化的候选人的数量有很大影响。

结论和意义

扩大适合症标准使得有可能改进准确识别适合人工耳蜗植入的个体病例。

Keywords:

• Speech audiometry
• word recognition
• hearing loss
• pure-tone loss
• prevalence

Disclosure statement

T.H. is working for a cochlear implant company. All other authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study, in the data collection or in the decision to publish the results.

Additional information

Funding

This research was partially funded by Cochlear Research & Development Ltd (IIR-2398).