Utility of bilateral acoustic hearing in combination with electrical stimulation provided by the cochlear implant

Abstract

Objective: The aim of the study was to quantify the benefit provided by having access to amplified acoustic hearing in the implanted ear for use in combination with contralateral acoustic hearing and the electrical stimulation provided by the cochlear implant. Design: Measures of spatial and non-spatial hearing abilities were obtained to compare performance obtained with different configurations of acoustic hearing in combination with electrical stimulation. In the combined listening condition participants had access to bilateral acoustic hearing whereas the bimodal condition used acoustic hearing contralateral to the implanted ear only. Experience was provided with each of the listening conditions using a repeated-measures A-B-B-A experimental design. Study sample: Sixteen post-linguistically hearing-impaired adults participated in the study. Results: Group mean benefit was obtained with use of the combined mode on measures of speech recognition in coincident speech in noise, localization ability, subjective ratings of real-world benefit, and musical sound quality ratings. Conclusions: Access to bilateral acoustic hearing after cochlear implantation provides significant benefit on a range of functional measures.

Key Words:

• Cochlear implant
• hybrid
• acoustic hearing

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the cochlear implant recipients for their participation and cooperation during this study. We thank Bev Sheridan for administrative support, and Jennie Gorrie for assistance in data collection. This research was funded by The HEARing Cooperative Research Centre.

Declaration of interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.