Speech Intelligibility as a Predictor of Cochlear Implant Outcome in Prelingually Deafened Adults

Abstract

The new test battery (or its reduced version), used as a measure of intelligibility, is a promising tool for guiding cochlear implant candidacy decisions and counseling for individual patients with prelingual deafness. Because intelligibility has superior predictive power in comparison to age at onset of deafness, the latter should be discarded as an exclusion criterion for cochlear implantation.