A Systematic Review of Cochlear Implant Outcomes in Prelingually-deafened, Late-implanted Patients

Otology & Neurology

Pattisapu, P., Lindquist, N. R., et al. (2020).

Otology & Neurology, 41(4), 444-451.

This meta-analysis investigates one-year post cochlear implant outcomes in individuals who were deaf before developing language and received late cochlear implantation.

No funding received

Through February 2018

Experimental studies

28 total studies; 13 included for meta-analysis

For prelingually-deafened, late-implanted individuals (PL-LI), cochlear implantation (CI) resulted in benefits for both quality of life and audiometric scores; however, benefits were less than those experienced by "traditional" (e.g., earlier implantation) CI candidates, and outcomes varied depending on patient characteristics. Severity of hearing loss impacted outcomes, with patients with better acoustic thresholds or better preoperative speech intelligibility demonstrating superior performance on audiometric testing post-CI. Prelingually deafened adolescents and adults demonstrated 44.6% improvement in open-set sentence scores and 37% improvement in open-set word scores. The authors also found a difference in CI outcomes between patients who had congenital deafness and those with progressive or acquired deafness. Etiology of deafness also influenced CI outcomes and risk factors. PL-LI patients who wore their devices more regularly demonstrated benefit on quality of life measures. Due to the variability of patient characteristics, implantation timing, and outcomes reported across studies, additional research with improved data reporting is needed.