Outcomes and factors impacting cochlea implantation amongst adults in Oman

Abstract

The reliability of cochlear implant in aural rehabilitation has been reported in numerous medical and healthcare related journals and its implementation are widely seen in most rehabilitation centers. However, there are underlying factors which differ from location to location. In patients report from different demographic data, a clear difference is usually seen when they underwent such implantation either due to the post implantation procedures or patient’s pre-implantation condition. Hence this research considers conducting the study to find out the post-cochlear implantation satisfaction and speech recognition outcomes of postlingual Omani adult and adolescent users in other to identify the underlying factors that affect these outcomes. An Arabic version (back-to-back translated) of Satisfaction with Amplification in Daily Life (SADL) Questionnaire, aided audiometry, and speech audiometry (with/ without visual clues) were used to assess cochlear implantation outcomes in an Omani demographics. In the study, participants’ mean score of speech perception test with visual clues was 75%, whereas their mean score on speech perception test without visual clues was 36.9%. Subsequently, all participants with the exception of one were satisfied as obtained from the SADL questionnaire. Furthermore, this research was able to obtain a significant correlation between the results of speech perception tests with visual clues and the overall score of SADL questionnaire (r=0.522) with a significance at α ≤ 0.05. It further indicates that an improvement from the participant’s receptive communication skills makes them more satisfied. Although, the results produced in this research are extensive, limited onsite participant from key rehabilitation center imposed some limitation on the sample size in this study.