Objectives: The present study was performed to evaluate the efficacy and clinical feasibility of using monopolar stimulation with the Clarion Simultaneous Analog Stimulation (SAS) strategy in patients with cochlear implants.
Methods: Speech recognition by 10 Clarion cochlear implant users was evaluated by means of 4 different speech processing strategy/electrode configuration combinations; ie, SAS and Continuous Interleaved Sampling (CIS) strategies were each used with monopolar (MP) and bipolar (BP) electrode configurations. The test measures included consonants, vowels, consonant-nucleus-consonant words, and Hearing in Noise Test sentences with a +10 dB signal-to-noise ratio. Additionally, subjective judgments of sound quality were obtained for each strategy/configuration combination.
Results: All subjects but 1 demonstrated open-set speech recognition with the SAS/MP combination. The group mean Hearing in Noise Test sentence score for the SAS/MP combination was 31.6% (range, 0% to 92%) correct, as compared to 25.0%, 46.7%, and 37.8% correct for the CIS/BP, CIS/MP, and SAS/BP combinations, respectively. Intersubject variability was high, and there were no significant differences in mean speech recognition scores or mean preference ratings among the 4 strategy/configuration combinations tested. Individually, the best speech recognition performance was with the subject's everyday strategy/configuration combination in 72% of the applicable cases. If the everyday strategy was excluded from the analysis, the subjects performed best with the SAS/MP combination in 37.5% of the remaining cases.
Conclusions: The SAS processing strategy with an MP electrode configuration gave reasonable speech recognition in most subjects, even though subjects had minimal previous experience with this strategy/configuration combination. The SAS/MP combination might be particularly appropriate for patients for whom a full dynamic range of electrical hearing could not be achieved with a BP configuration.