Hearing Preservation

Today I came across http://hearingpreservation.com, a website for an annual conference on what it sounds like – hearing preservation.  The abstracts from last year’s conference in Kansas City are online in a pdf file, and while most are only one page, and many go over my head by using technical terms for anontomy of the ear that I am not familiar with, there’s a lot that’s interesting to read.  I’ve sent a couple of emails to the presenters asking if they would share the whole presentation they gave with me.

I think this one sums up the whole phenomomena of hearing preservation in cochlear implant recipients.

Mean CNC word recognition performance was 76 and 86 percent in the electric
only and bimodal conditions, respectively. The degree of hearing preservation,
however, was not found to be correlated with higher speech perception performance
using CNC monosyllabic word recognition lists—though the small sample size may
not have sufficient power to allow for such an analysis. A subset of these hearing
preservation patients have also been evaluated on measures of music and speech
perception in complex listening environments. The hearing preservation patients
demonstrate consistently higher levels of performance on all measures. These
data—while preliminary in nature—support soft surgical techniques with a goal of
hearing preservation for all cochlear implant recipients.  – R. H. Gifford, PhD, Director, Cochlear Implant Program, Mayo Clinic

And this one:

Electric acoustic stimulation (EAS) has recently become a widely accepted intervention
for subjects suffering from hearing loss in the mid and high frequency range who
gain no benefit from hearing aids alone.  – J. Tillein, S. Braun

It’s interesting. I’m glad I’ve decided to try to go this route.