Hearing preservation in cochlear implant recipients: A cross‐sectional cohort study

Abstract

The success of cochlear implants (CI) has led to a more diverse population of CI recipients. Originally, only patients with near-total hearing loss were eligible for a CI. Nowadays, however, more and more CI recipients have considerable residual hearing at lower frequencies prior to implantation. This development has led to a renewed focus on achieving hearing preservation (HP) in the CI field. 1 HP might be important for three main reasons. (1) CI recipients might benefit from their residual hearing as it can be used for electric-acoustic stimulation (EAS). 2 The use of EAS can improve speech perception in difficult listening situations with background noise or even improve musical melody recognition. (2) By achieving HP, a new category of patients can benefit from a CI, for example patients suffering from tinnitus. (3) Preventing hair cell loss might potentially halt auditory nerve degeneration to a degree, resulting possibly in better electric hearing outcomes in CI recipients. though there is no lack of studies investigating HP, no consensus exists on how to achieve HP. In addition, the effect of HP on speech perception outcomes, and other factors on HP, including surgical experience, were investigated.