Rehabilitation for multiple-channel cochlear prosthesis patients

Abstract

The postoperative program for multiple-channel cochlear prosthesis patients can be divided into four main areas: 1) Psychophysical evaluation is carried out to optimize the patient's speech processor for their individual needs, Measurements required include threshold, dynamic range and pitch ranking for each of the implanted electrodes. 2) Counselling is very important to ensure patients are able to effectively operate their speech processor and that they are aware of factors in the environment which may affect performance (e.g., noise). 3) Auditory training and training in conjunction with lipreading for tasks grading from simple (e.g., discrimination of word length) to more difficult (e.g. consonant discrimination) is of benefit in making patients aware of their capabilities with the prosthesis and helping them to improve communication skills. However, highly specific training (e.g., closed set vocabulary) does not seem to be of general benefit to patients. Speech tracking provides a training procedure relevant to normal communication but has some limitations due to the degree of familiarity reached with a particular speaker. 4) Assessment of patients is carried out at this stage in great detail as it is necessary to collect data about the effectiveness of cochlear implants and also to provide information about possible improvements to speech processing strategies and external hardware. The amount of assessment required will decline as the procedure becomes established, but some investigation will continue to be necessary.