Publication:

Evaluation of outcome of cochlear implant surgery in tertiary care centre

Background Childhood deafness affects the hearing, speech and social development rendering individual socially isolated which further on aggravates language and auditory difficulties. A cochlear implant is a neuroprosthesis that bypasses the damaged inner hair cells and delivers the signal directly to brain which is then interpreted as sound. Cochlear implant when coupled with speech therapy plays an important role in determining the linguistic and cognitive outcome, thus allows candidate to integrate into the education system and the social world.

Methods A prospective longitudinal study performed on 35 patients of age under 5 years presented with Profound hearing loss, underwent cochlear implant in ENT department NSCB and MCH Jabalpur. These patients were followed-up during the study period from 1st March 2020 to 31st August 2021 for progress and response to speech therapy.

Results Mean age of patients underwent CI was 3.51years, 3 got explanted due to various reason and 1 lost to follow-up. Speech therapy was attended by 82.8% children both online and offline, and improvement in cognition and speech was noted in 80% children. About 45.7% cases could attain writing skills. 3 among 35 candidates are able to attend normal school.

Conclusions After Cochlear implantation, continuous speech therapy by single therapist with dedicated team and committed parents results in favorable outcome in 80% patients in terms of improvement in cognitive and language development. Thus, every patient should get the chance to rehabilitate with CI and speech therapy.