Clinical trials

There is a rapidly growing population of adult and pediatric cochlear implant (CI) recipients with acoustic hearing preservation in the implanted ear(s) allowing for combined Electric and binaural Acoustic Stimulation (EAS). Despite the rapid technological and surgical advancements that have led to this increased prevalence, there is limited research on EAS outcomes-particularly for pediatric EAS listeners-including the expected trajectory of benefit following EAS fitting and underlying mechanisms driving benefit in EAS users of all ages. Thus, the purpose of this project is to provide a comprehensive description of behavioral and electrophysiologic measures of binaural hearing in adults and children both with normal hearing and EAS users.

Cochlear implants are surgically implanted devices which restore the ability to hear to the hearing impaired. Improvements in surgery and electrodes have results in an increased number of adults and children who have residual hearing and can benefit from electric and acoustic hearing in the same ear. This is called Electric Acoustic Stimulation (EAS). Many studies have shown that adult EAS users show significant benefits for speech understanding in noise and spatial hearing tasks as compared to a CI paired only with a contralateral HA. Even though this type of hearing is becoming more common, there is limited research on how it can be beneficial to children with CIs. The benefits of this study are a greater understanding of the participant's speech understanding, binaural processing, and spatial hearing. The results will help audiologists and researcher better understand how cochlear implants work, specifically when using electric and acoustic hearing in the same ear.