Cochlear implant in patients with residual hearing.

Objective: The postoperative speech perception abilities of severely hearing-impaired patients with multi-channel cochlear implant were compared with preoperative speech perception performance with conventional hearing aids.
Methods: Cochlear implantation was performed in six severely to profoundly hearing-impaired patients. They had unaided pure-tone thresholds of 70-100-dB HL and aided thresholds of 35-90-dB HL in the better ear, but were not able to perceive speech sounds well with hearing aids.
Results: Postoperatively, all the patients had significantly improved speech perception performance, exceeded the average skills of profoundly deaf cochlear implant users, and were able to communicate without writing.
Conclusion: These results imply that cochlear implant may be indicated for severely to profoundly deaf subjects, if they receive little or no benefit from conventional hearing aids.