Article
Do we need new possibilities to assess basic language skills in rehabilitation of early cochlear implanted children?
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Published: | July 22, 2009 |
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Outline
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Establishing the newborn hearing screening we identify hearing-impaired children very soon.
Fitting them with a proper hearing system – in case a cochlear-implant (CI) – in the first year of life, we improve the chance of a natural auditory-verbal language development.
In a retrospective study we analysed the FDA-test results of the first 24 month after first fitting of 174 cochlear implanted children. We compared the data of children implanted in their first year of life (N=60) – group 1, with those children implanted in their second year of life (N=114) – group 2.
Following their further development we looked on the school they go to.
In the first year both groups showed a parallel development.
In the second year after implantation the children, implanted in their second year of life, seem to be better in their development referring to the results of language tests. But we had to consider the age of the children. So we compared the results of group 1 after 24 month of hearing with CI and the results of group 2 after 12 month of hearing with CI. So the children of both groups were between two and three years old. We found significant better results in group 1. With regard to the school we found that the number of children going to a regular school is bigger in the group of children implanted in their first year of life.
It seemed that the applied tests do not fit for the sufficed documentation of the early development of young cochlear implanted children.
In order to guarantee the quality of CI-supply, to use the chance of early identification and to differ between normal hearing problems and further developmental impairments in time, we need to investigate new assessments.