Comparison of the body-worn CIS-PRO + and the behind-the-ear-worn TEMPO + cochlear implant systems in Finnish-speaking adult CI users: any differences in results with experienced listeners?

CONCLUSION

The results indicate that the need for upgrading the processor and/or speech coding strategy should be considered individually, if the processor and coding strategy are functioning properly and a good level of speech perception has been achieved.

OBJECTIVES

Our aim was to study the intra-individual differences of the body-worn CIS-PRO + and the behind-the-ear-worn TEMPO + cochlear implant systems used in the MED-EL Combi40/Combi40 + implants.

SUBJECTS AND METHODS

The hearing level, sentence, word and phoneme recognition of eight adult subjects were determined in an ABA study design. Additionally, a self-assessment questionnaire was used. Mean scores and 95% confidence intervals, and individual scores were analysed.

RESULTS

The subjects tended to score slightly better on word and phoneme recognition with CIS-PRO+ and CIS strategy than with TEMPO+ and CIS+, but there were no statistically significant differences. Subjectively the participants ranked speech perception and discussion in noise to be slightly easier with TEMPO+ and CIS+. Six of the eight subjects preferred TEMPO+ and CIS+ and two of eight preferred CIS-PRO+ with CIS or number-of-maxima.