2023 Volume 162 Pages 37-43
A 93-year-old man with bilateral mild hearing loss since childhood due to chronic middle ear infections could hear and speak as an adult, but his hearing level had gradually become worse. He started to wear hearing aids when he was 70 years old, but he still found it difficult to hear. Finally, he could not understand the contents of any conversations by 87 years old, even with hearing aids. He accepted to undergo cochlear implantation on the right side at the age of 93 years. The results of the speech recognition test improved after surgery for monosyllables (from 28% to 38%) and single words (from 18% to 38%), but no improvement of sentence recognition was observed. Oldest-old patients have little occasion to speak, and could benefit from special tools, such as an audiobook or DVD, which they can learn by themselves.
