Surgical treatment and rehabilitation of prelingually and perilingually deafened children and adults with the nucleus multichannel cochlear implant.

We began our program in September 1992, using the Nucleus 22 Channel Cochlear Implant. To date, we have operated on four patients, one child with congenital hearing loss, two prelinguistically deaf adults and one perilingually deaf adult. Our results have shown a significant increase in auditory and speech reception and perception skills in the child. The perilingually deaf adult is able to understand speech in open set speech discrimination testing and, although we do not expect open set speech discrimination in the prelinguistically deaf adults, to date their results have been satisfactory. The two prelingually deaf adults are in an audiological rehabilitation program. Their response in prosodic aspects of speech and lipreading ability with sound have improved significantly. The only surgical complication was an infection of the flap in the child, but it was treated satisfactorily with i.v. penicillin.