Long-term speech perception in children with cochlear implants compared with children with conventional hearing aids

Objective: To determine the speech perception of children with cochlear implants. Subjects and methods: Speech perception results of seven children with cochlear implants (excellent performers), who showed stable speech recognition scores in the long term, were compared with those of severely hearing-impaired children with conventional hearing aids (reference group). The groups of children were matched according to their mean free-field aided thresholds. Results: The results of the open-set word recognition test were comparable in the two groups. Conclusion: If we consider the results of the hearing aid users as the gold standard, the results suggest that speech recognition in selected children with a cochlear implant is close to optimal.