Children with severe hearing loss who were under the age of five years and submitted to cochlear implant is a better understanding and improvement of the expression language that would be expected from their pre-implant language scores, with younger age at implantation associated with a greater improvement, according to a study published in the April 21 issue of JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association).Cochlear implant systems include an external microphone and wore a programmed microprocessor to extract the intensity, frequency and timing of the indices of acoustic signals, which are then converted into an electrical code. The transmitted code is transmitted to a receiver implanted surgically implanted a series of contacts in the cochlea to stimulate auditory neurons survive. The authors write: With experience, children understand speech, environmental sounds and music with varying degrees of success. However, the time of cochlear implant that can give the best results is unclear.
The development of oral language in children after cochlear implantation
The authors write significantly higher rates of comprehension and expression were observed in children receiving facility to less than 18 months compared to children who underwent implantation between the ages of 18 and 36 months and over 36 months. The majority of children who received implants before 18 months showed an improvement of paths parallel to those of hearing controls. cochlear implant after 18 months of age was associated with less favorable trajectories of improvement and greater variability in performance measures of both comprehension and expression.
John K. Niparko, MD, of Johns Hopkins Medicine, Baltimore, and the development team evaluated oral communication for a period of 3 years in children undergoing cochlear implant before the age of 5 years (n = 188) and a children’s hearing similar age (n = 97) of two nursery schools. Follow-up was completed between November 2005 and May 2008. Reynell Development Language Scale was used to evaluate the spoken language comprehension and expression.
According to information provided in the young children who have severe profound article sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) face challenges in the development of spoken language because of an inability to detect acoustic-phonetic indexes that are essential for speech recognition, even when it is with traditional amplification devices (hearing aids). More than half of these children are receiving cochlear implants.
Niparko, MD, Emily A. Tobey, PhD, Donna J. Thal, PhD, Laurie S. Eisenberg, PhD, Nae-Yuh Wang, Ph.D., Alexandra L. Quittner, PhD, Nancy E. Fink, MPH, for the CDAC Investigative Team
The scientists concluded The results of this study have implications for clinical management of children with severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss. Although not conclusive, the age at implantation and residual hearing were associated with increases in interest rates for the acquisition of oral language in children with cochlear implants. These results highlight the need to develop objective tools that can monitor the benefit of amplification in supporting the acquisition of spoken language and guide early intervention with cochlear implant.