The effect of duration of using cochlear implant and hearing aid on the speech intelligibility of children with hearing loss

Because people with hearing loss have no feedback mechanism to monitor and adjust their speech٫so their speech production are often unclear and affected. Today, by advances in audio enhancement systems and biotechnologies of implantation٫ the greater efficiency of rehabilitation interventions, was provided to children with hearing impairment. In this study we aimed to investigate the relation of the use of hearing aids and cochlear implant to speech intelligibility of children with hearing impairment.
This study is carried out on 30 children 3 to 10 years old with hearing impairment. Speech sample of children is collected in 2 level of word and sentence. The relationship between speech intelligibility scores and duration of use of hearing aids and cochlear implant was evaluated by using of Statistical analysis.
The study indicated that there is more correlation between increasing the duration of implant usage, and increasing speech intelligibility in comparison with increasing duration of hearing aids usage, and increasing speech intelligibility.
Having noticed that, the severe to profound hearing impaired children with cochlear implant in comparison with the most advanced hearing aids available, usually get sounds in better quality and quantity. So it seems that compared with hearing aids, cochlear implant serves more capably at enhancing speech intelligibility of children with hearing impairment.