Cochlear implants in the very young child

To explore the concerns related to cochlear implantation (CI) in very young infants under 12 months, we investigated 14 infants diagnosed as bilateral profound congenital sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) and fitted with unilateral CI from March 2002 to July 2009. The average age of implantation was 11.36 +/- 0.84 months, the average operation time was 1.96 +/- 0.37 hours, the amount of intraoperative bleeding was 17.86 +/- 3.23 ml, and hospital stay lasted 5 days. No postoperative complication was found in the follow-up period. The interval between device activation and babbling onset was 2.93 +/- 0.92 months. Compared with the older children group, we could conclude that it is feasible and safe to put a very early CI for bilateral profound SNHL, which could keep infants within the normal age range for babbling onset.