الفهرس 
Cochlear ImplantOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
During the last years, the indications for cochlear implantation extended significantly due to positive experience with cochlear implants (CIs). Nowadays, associated disabilities (like mental retardation, autism) do not exclude the child from implantation.
For very young children or children with special needs, the fitting process is complex and challenging. Many children do not possess the hearing experience, the language skills, or the reasonable conceptual development necessary to provide sophisticated feedback. In addition to implementing objective techniques for fitting the speech processor, the observation of the child’s behavior and/or speech production following each fitting session is essential in the fitting process. Unfortunately, it is affected by his age, mentality and the presence of other disabilities.
This research was designed to study the value of Speech P1 CAEP as a reliable and objective tool in CI programing independent of the abilities or degree of cooperation of the implanted children.
The study comprised 43 children implanted at least for one year and from whom a reliable consistent behavioral threshold could be obtained. Twenty five age-matched normal hearing children served as a control group. For all children participating in the study, sound field evaluation using warble tones 500-8000 Hz including the mid octave frequencies and speech reception thresholds to synthetic syllables ‘ba, ga, sa’ were performed. Speech P1 cortical auditory evoked potentials (CAEP) using synthetic speech syllables (ba, ga, sa) at intensity of 80 dB SPL and down to threshold were also recorded. The three syllables represented the low, mid and high frequency spectrum. The tests were conducted for the implanted children while wearing their CIs. The correlation between Speech P1 CAEP and behavioral thresholds was studied. The speech CAEP was correlated with the behavioral thresholds of the three stimuli used with different sensation levels. This study demonstrated the effectiveness of implementing this test in programing children especially difficult to test ones.