Japan is a rapidly aging society, and one area of concern is hearing loss among the elderly. Hearing loss is often treated by cochlear implantation in the non-elderly population, and while the number of cochlear implant surgeries for the elderly with hearing loss has been increasing, relatively few reports are available on the effectiveness of cochlear implantation for this group. We thus collected the data of elderly patients who underwent cochlear implantation at our department between 2016 and 2020. The total of 20 patients were divided into two groups: the early elderly group (65 to 74 years) of 10 patients (10 ears) and the late elderly group (75 years or older) of 10 patients (10 ears).
We collected data on the patient background, the speech discrimination ability based on objective preoperative and one-year-postoperative measurement of word sound listening performance using the 67-S word chart and comparison of the CI-2004 word sound listening performance (monosyllables, words, and sentences), a subjective postoperative hearing questionnaire and a subjective satisfaction questionnaire based on the Nijmegen Cochlear Implant Questionnaire (NCIQ) Both patients and family members were asked to fill out the NCIQ for all the patients.
The results of the 67-S word chart assessment showed postoperative improvement within each group while assessment by the CI-2004 showed a similar degree of improvement in the two groups; and the subjective postoperative hearing questionnaire showed that both groups adequately used their cochlear implants. The results of the NCIQ assessment showed that patients in the early group felt there was significant improvement in the postoperative period, while those in the late group did not. However, the NCIQ responses of the family members suggested significant improvement in the postoperative period in both groups.
Our study results suggest that cochlear implantation may yield improvements even in elderly patients with hearing loss.
