Indication and rehabilitation for pediatric cochlear implantation are discussed based on the data of seventeen children who received cochlear implants in the authors' implant center.The efficacy of hearing aids and cochlear implants were evaluated by pure tone audiometry, speech perception tests and IT-MAIS, which is an auditory intergration scale for infants and toddlers.All children exhibited significant improvement in their auditory skills, which had not been observed during the preoperative follow-up period using hearing aids.As for rehabilitation, we avoided intensive auditory training, but tried to let them acquire spoken language naturally by playing with them providing various situations with different kind of speech and environmental sounds that may interest them.Although we clearly recommended the auditory oral approach for rehabilitation in pediatric cochlear implant users, final decisions were entrusted to the parents and the local (deaf) school teachers after full explanation of our policy on rehabilitation.
