Abstract
More than 100 adult patients were implanted in the Czech republic till now and the number has been growing rapidly in the last 6 years. The results of retrospective study of all adult patients (N=46, mean age 40.1 y.) implanted in our implant centre in years 2000-2004 and rehabilitated in 2001-2006 are presented.
There were used both cochlear implant (N=43) and brainstem implant system (N=3) by Cochlear Nucleus type 22 and 24, all of them unilaterally. The aim of the study was to obtain an overview of results in correlation with pre-operative predictive factors as duration of severe hearing loss, lip-reading ability and age of patients.
There were evaluated 100% of cases from the 5-year period. A detailed patient history was obtained, preoperative and post-operative examination by pure tone audiometry, lip-reading ability by a video-test, tests of speech understanding (open-set and closed-set word identification - CWA Czech Word Audiometry in a free field) and quality of life assessment (adapted from International Outcome Inventory).
The results were obtained during periodical examinations (at least 1 year after the implantation). The results were compared in 4 groups: brainstem implant systems (N=3, mean age 32.3 y.), cochlear implants in long-term-progressive hearing loss (N=18, mean age 37.6 y., onset of severe hearing loss in childhood, well-developed-speaking patients only), cochlear implants in sudden deafness (N=14, mean age 43.6 y., duration of hearing loss under 5 years - due to meningitis, antibiotics, trauma) and cochlear implants in patients in older age (N 6, mean age 62.6 y., patients over 59 years only, both long-term-progressive and sudden deafness together).
Based on our results we can see no risk of a worse post-operative performance in people older than 59 years (N=6, mean age 62.6 y.). There are better results in speech-understanding without lip-reading and subjective satisfaction than in other groups.
Also the results of patients with long-term-progressive hearing loss (N=18, mean age 37.6 y.) are fully comparable with the mean results of all-cochlear-implanted group (N=43).