2015 HSC Section 1 Book of Articles

Colletti et al

Figure 2. Category of Auditory Performance (CAP) developmen- tal trajectory in children with cochlear nerve deficiency: auditory brainstem implant (ABI) vs cochlear implant (CI). The trend lines for the ABI and CI groups are represented by the dashed and solid lines, respectively.

Figure 4. Last Category of Auditory Performance (CAP) scores of children with cochlear nerve deficiency fitted with an auditory brainstem implant (ABI) or a cochlear implant (CI) grouped by degree of cochlear malformation.

Figure 3. Category of Auditory Performance (CAP) scores and trend lines of 40 children with cochlear nerve deficiency fitted with an auditory brainstem implant (ABI) or a cochlear implant (CI) at the last follow-up.

Figure 5. Last Category of Auditory Performance (CAP) scores in children with cochlear nerve deficiency fitted with an auditory brainstem implant (ABI) or a cochlear implant (CI) with or without associated disabilities.

The benefit from CI was limited to auditory awareness with behavioral responses induced at very high levels of charge units, often associated with nonauditory stimulation such as facial nerve stimulation and disequilibrium, so much so that in 5 patients, all electrodes had to be inacti- vated and the children explanted and fitted with ABIs. The children with normal cochleae and either ACNs or SCNs fitted with ABIs demonstrated a significantly earlier and better perceptual outcome on the CAP test than did children with cochlear abnormalities; all children with normal cochleae had a CAP score of more than 5 at the last follow-up after ABI fitting (6.4 6 0.5 vs 2.3 6 1.2; P \ .0001) ( Figure 4 ). No children with normal cochleae pre- sented associated disabilities. The ABI children without associated disabilities showed better auditory performance than children with asso- ciated disabilities at all follow-up intervals (6.1 6 0.8 vs

2.1 6 1.1; P \ .0001, at the last follow-up). Conversely, the CI children without associated disabilities demonstrated a small but not significant difference in performance at all follow-up intervals (1.5 6 0.9 vs 1.4 6 0.4; P = .483, at the last follow-up) compared with children with disabilities ( Figure 5 ). Safety No major anesthesiological or surgical complications such as cardiac arrest, facial palsy, or flap breakdown were observed in any child. Among minor anesthesiological complications, 2 children aged 13 and 24 months in the ABI group experienced

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