人工内耳の言語習得前失聴者への応用

抄録

From 1987 we have performed multichannel cochlear implantation in 20 patients with a profound sensorineural hearing impairment. Three patients were prelingually deaf. The postoperative results of two of these three patients are reported. Both of them showed reduced tolerance for sound. One of them easily became familiar with the environmental sounds such as horn of cars, birds'singing, etc. The vowel and consonant confusion abilities of this patient was fairy good three months after operation. On the other hand, the other patient needed more period to become familiar with the environmental sounds. Two years after operation the speech comprehension ability of this patient is still poor. From this result, it is considered that the prelingually deaf patients needed more period for the rehabilitation than the postlingually deaf patients, and they seem easy to hear the environmental sounds, and that there were considerable variations in performance among the prelingually deaf patients.