A case material with post lingual severe hearing loss and communication handicap.

The analyses have given some general clues to the therapeutic handling of these patient categories: 1. The A and B groups can be labelled "hearing" with clearly useful residual hearing. 2. The patients in the C group, as a rule, are utilizing very little from acoustic speech stimulation, mostly the prosodic information. Several patients in this group are possible implant candidates, and it is reasonable to expect that (with a suitable stimulus device and a suitable application of this) the patients could get an additional support during speech reading, so that they function as the B group. Tactile devices are also an alternative or a supplement for this group, and a pilot study on six patients is in progress in the department in cooperation with the Department of Speech Communication at the Royal Institute of Technology. 3. The patients within the A and B groups will in the first place be offered additional functional training programmes (prosodic training, audio-visual training and possibly vibration training) and, as an ultimate alternative a social activation in group therapy may be considered. Some patients in these groups might also be candidates in the future for an extra cochlear implant.