Graeme Clark Collection

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    Post-implant habilitation for children using cochlear implants: effects on long-term outcome
    Dowell, Richard C. ; Dettman, Shani J. ; WILLIAMS, SARAH ; TOMOV, ALEXANDRA ; Hollow, Rod ; Clark, Graeme M. ( 2002)
    Most clinicians working in the cochlear implant field advocate a regular habilitation program for young children receiving implants. The development of auditory skills and the incorporation of these skills into language development are thought to be key areas for such programs. Studies of speech perception and language outcomes demonstrate that an educational approach that emphasises spoken language development appears to enhance the results for implanted children. It remains difficult, however, to demonstrate clearly the effect of habilitation objectively and to determine how much individual attention is desirable for each child. This pilot study considered the long term speech perception and language outcomes for two groups of children who received Nucleus cochlear implants in Melbourne. One group (n=17) was identified as receiving regular habilitation from the Melbourne Cochlear Implant Clinic over a four year post-operative period. Another group (n=l1) was identified as receiving very little regular habilitation over the post-operative period. The language and speech perception results for these two groups showed a significant difference in performance on a wide range of measures with the group receiving regular formal habilitation demonstrating better performance on all measures. These groups included only congenitally, profoundly hearing-impaired children and did not differ significantly on mean age at implant or experience at the time of assessment. Further studies are needed to clarify these results on a larger group of children, and to control for additional confounding variables. Nonetheless, these preliminary results provide support for the incorporation of regular long-term habilitation into cochlear implant programs for children.
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    Predicting speech perception outcomes for children using multichannel cochlear implants [Abstract]
    Dowell, Richard C. ; Dettman, Shani J. ; WILLIAMS, SARAH ; Hill, Katie ; TOMOV, ALEXANDRA ; Clark, Graeme M. ( 2002)
    The ability to predict outcomes for children who are cochlear implant candidates is most helpful in counselling families and making clinical recommendations. Open-set speech perception results have been collected for all children implanted with the Nucleus device in Melbourne. Speech perception as assessed at six month intervals following implantation. Information wascollected for each child regarding type of hearing loss, duration and age at onset of profound hearing loss, age at implantation, pre and post-implant communication mode, developmental delay, speech coding scheme and implant experience.
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    Latest results for adults & children using cochlear implants & future implications
    Cowan, Robert C. ; Clark, Graeme M. ; Dowell, Richard C. ; Dettman, Shani J ; Barker, Elizabeth ; Latus, Katie ; Hollow, Rod ; Blamey, Peter J. ( 2000)
    The overall success of a cochlear implant procedure is most often quantified by assessing how well implantees can understand speech. This is because a primary aim of the application of cochlear implants is to improve communication, and it is relatively straightforward to obtain accurate measures of speech recognition. The quality of cochlear implant hearing is not well described by measuring an audiogram, as the detection of sound is similar across all implantees if the device is functioning correctly. A commonly used measure of speech understanding is the CID everyday sentence test where the number of correctly identified words within sentences is assessed. In the early days of cochlear implants, subjects could only recognize a few words without lipreading but the most recent results show average scores of 80% without lipreading for this sentence test, after 6 months of experience with the device.
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    Where to now? - Impact of New Technologies on use of cochlear implants
    Van Hoesel, R. ; Zhang, A. ; Tykocinski, M. ; Dham, M. ; Patrick, J. ; Parker, J. ; Clark, Graeme M. ; Cowan, R. S. C. ; Saunders, E. ; Vandali, A. E. ; Dowell, R. C. ; Treaba, C. ; Harrison, J. M. ( 2000)
    The history of cochlear implant use by adults and children with profound hearing loss although relatively short (20 some years), has been characterised by continual technological innovations which have enhanced the performance, packaging, and clinical use of these devices. In particular, the development of the Nucleus multiple channel cochlear implant has included a series of speech processing hardware and speech processing strategy, implemented by Cochlear Limited, and based on research findings that have resulted in an increase in mean speech perception benefits for adults and children.