Objective: Previous studies have suggested that individuals with long-term prelinguistic deafness who receive cochlear implants show little improvement in speech recognition skills. The purpose of this study was to examine the auditory functioning of individuals with prelinguistic deafness who received cochlear implants after the age of 12.
Study design and setting: A retrospective study of open-set speech recognition was undertaken for 15 patients (adolescents and adults) with prelinguistic deafness who underwent implantation in the Ottawa Cochlear Implant Program. The results of open-set speech perception tests, both words and sentences, were reviewed to assess auditory functioning after implantation. Qualitative data using the Performance Inventory for Profound and Severe Loss questionnaire were also collected for the adults.
Results and discussion: The results of this study indicate that individuals with long-term prelinguistic deafness can achieve significant open-set speech understanding with a cochlear implant, although there is a wide range of performance across patients. The results ranged from 0% to 74% for words and 0% to 98% for sentences.