The selection process of children who can benefit from a cochlear implant It is not as simple as it may seem, since not all deep hearing impaired people have the possibility of being implanted, nor will the results be similar in all cases.
It is necessary that the expectations, before any demand for cochlear implants, be as real as possible about what can be achieved in each case, since the cochlear implant is not cheap and must always ensure the benefit in the development of Hearing impaired child.
In general, people who can benefit from a cochlear implant can be divided into three groups, taking into account the age of hearing loss, as we have seen previously.
Candidate Groups
People with hearing impairmentsprelocutives or prelinguals would be all those in which hearing loss is present from birth or appeared during the first two years of the child's life. The main feature of these children is that they have no hearing experience, that is, they have not trained the auditory system.
We also encounter a series of problems as a result of not having used the auditory pathway. One of them is that, being unable to be exposed to sounds like other children without hearing problems, there is a negative effect on the maturation of the auditory path. On the other hand, the earlier the implantation, the better results will be achieved through the cochlear implant.
In these children, any possible language-related learning before the cochlear implant is performed will always be beneficial in the face of future adaptation to the implant and, therefore, the new world of sounds that opens before the child.
Currently, the minimum age at which a child could be implanted is more determined by the assurance that the indication is correct (that is, that you can benefit from the implant) rather than by age itself.
We can also meet people whose hearing impairment is perilocutive , that is, when the hearing loss has occurred between two and five years of age: critical age of language acquisition. These children are characterized by the fact that they have maintained normal functioning of the auditory pathway until the time of the onset of hearing loss.
This means that they have had a normalized development of the language until the problem arose, at which point a rapid setback in their language begins, increasingly marked.
These children have auditory memory, that is, they have previously used their ear canal, and they have a certain amount of vocabulary, which will vary depending on when the hearing impairment occurred.
Finally, the children postlocutives they are those where hearing loss appeared after acquiring language. This group has a competent language that will help a lot during the rehabilitation period that will take place after the implant.
What should be observed before a cochlear implant?
We have already seen the three groups of children with hearing impairments that may be present, but this is not the only criterion for performing a cochlear implant, since there must be a series of conditions, among which we highlight:
- that the severity of hearing loss makes a conventional means of amplification ineffective, that is, the use of hearing aids.
- that there are no alterations in the anatomy of the child that make it impossible to introduce the electrodes during surgery.
Conclusion
After all this, we can conclude that Those who have a deep or total bilateral sensorineural deafness (i.e. in both ears) and who cannot benefit from a conventional hearing aid can benefit from a cochlear implant..
Thus, once seen the criteria of candidate selection, we will talk about the process of treating a cochlear implant.
