HSC Section 8_April 2017

individual patient scores for the preoperative and 6- month postactivation test intervals can be found in Figure 4. Pediatric patients are represented with open symbols; mean percent correct scores were 59% (SD 16.3%) preoperatively and 72% (SD 16.0%) at 6- months postactivation. Scores were analyzed using a Student t test and showed no significant difference between the preoperative and 6-month test interval t (8) 5 1.71, P 5 0.12. Tinnitus Suppression The subjective presence of tinnitus was recorded pre- and postoperatively. Among the 23 participants, 13 described having tinnitus before surgery. Of them, 12 (92%) participants reported that their tinnitus was improved after surgery. One person reported no change in tinnitus after surgery. DISCUSSION Single-sided deafness impairs auditory function of one ear and leads to deficits for speech in noise under- standing and localization. Current treatment options have been limited to devices that route the signal from the affected side to the side with normal hearing but do not restore binaural hearing. Cochlear implantation has been offered as an alternative treatment option and one that can restore true binaural hearing. The emerging literature is encouraging, although comprised of reports with small sample sizes, variable follow-up, heterogeneous populations, differing test parameters, and variable outcomes. The purpose of this study was to evaluate speech recognition performance in a group of adults and children with SSD through a multicenter design. Results of the current study clearly demonstrate that CI can provide partial hearing restoration and can significantly improve both word and sentence scores in the ear implanted when measured in quiet. This finding is in agreement with previous reports. 10,11,22 The degree of improvement, however, is less than the improvement

Fig. 3. Individual patient scores for AzBio sentences in quiet for the preoperative, 3-month, and 6-month postactivation test inter- vals. Pediatric patients are represented with open symbols.

postactivation) as a within-subjects variable. Results showed a significant main effect of test interval, F (2, 20) 5 24.1, P < 0.001. The main effect of test interval was followed up with post-hoc pairwise comparisons using Bonferonni corrections, which showed significant improvement in CNC word recognition for the ear implanted between the preoperative and 3-month postac- tivation intervals, P 5 0.001, but not between the 3- month and 6-month postactivation intervals, P 5 0.45. AzBio Sentence Understanding in Quiet Average AzBio sentence recognition scores in quiet were present for 18 participants preoperatively, 11 par- ticipants at 3-months postactivation, and nine partici- pants at 6-months postactivation. Individual patient scores at the three test intervals can be found in Figure 3. Pediatric patients are represented with open symbols. Mean AzBio sentence scores were 18.4% (SD 28.5%) pre- operatively, 65.9% (SD 17.9%) at the 3-month postactiva- tion interval, and 66.0% (SD 18.2%) at the 6-month postactivation interval. The data were analyzed using RM-ANOVA with test interval and listening condition as within-subject factors. The results demonstrated a sig- nificant main effect of test interval F (2,12) 5 53.26, P < 0.001. The main effect of test interval was followed up with pairwise comparisons with Bonferonni corrections, which showed significant improvement for the unilateral condition between preoperative and 3-month postactiva- tion intervals, P < .001, but not between the 3-month and 6-month postactivation test intervals, P 5 .89. AzBio Sentence Understanding in 1 5 dB Signal- to-Noise Ratio Average AzBio sentence recognition scores in 1 5 dB SNR quiet were present for 10 individuals preopera- tively, two individuals at 3-months postactivation, and eight people at 6-months postactivation. Due to the exceptionally low number of scores at 3-months postacti- vation, statistical analysis was completed using only the preoperative and 6-month postactivation scores. The

Fig. 4. Individual patient scores for AzBio sentences in 1 5 dB signal-to-noise ratio at the preoperative and 6-month postactiva- tion test intervals. Pediatric patients are represented with open symbols.

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