Long-term outcomes of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Cochlear Implant Program among pediatric implantees

Goh BS 1 , Fadzilah N 2 , Abdullah A 3 , Othman BF 4 , Umat C 5

Affiliations 

  • 1 Department of Otorhinolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery, Level 9, Clinical Block, Hospital Canselor Tuanku Mukhriz, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Medical Center, Jalan Yaacob Latiff, 56000 Cheras, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Electronic address: irenegbs@yahoo.com
  • 2 Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Hospital Sultanah Nora Ismail, Jalan Korma, Taman Soga, 83000 Batu Pahat, Johor, Malaysia
  • 3 Department of Otorhinolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery, Level 9, Clinical Block, Hospital Canselor Tuanku Mukhriz, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Medical Center, Jalan Yaacob Latiff, 56000 Cheras, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 4 Institute of Ear, Hearing and Speech (Institute-HEARS), Block 8, 3rd Floor, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Jalan Temerloh, 53200 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 5 School of Rehabilitation Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Jalan Raja Muda Abdul Aziz, 50300 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Int J Pediatr Otorhinolaryngol, 2018 Feb;105:27-32.
PMID: 29447813 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijporl.2017.11.024

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: Cochlear implant (CI) greatly enhances auditory performance as compared to hearing aids and has dramatically affected the educational and communication outcomes for profoundly deaf children. Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) pioneered CI program in 1995 in the South East Asia. We would like to report the long-term outcomes of UKM paediatric cochlear implantation in terms of: the proportion of children who were implanted and still using the device, the children's modes of communication, their educational placements, and their functional auditory/oral performance. We also examined the factors that affected the outcomes measured.

STUDY DESIGN: This was a cross sectional observational study.

METHODS: Two sets of questionnaires were given to 126 parents or primary caregivers of the implantees. The first set of questionnaire contained questions to assess the children's usage of CI, their types of education placement, and their modes of communication. The second set of questionnaire was the Parent's Evaluation Of Aural/Oral Performance of Children (PEACH) to evaluate the children's auditory functionality.

RESULTS: Our study showed that among the implantees, 97.6% are still using their CI, 69.8% communicating orally, and 58.5% attending mainstream education. For implantees that use oral communication and attend mainstream education, their mean age of implantation is 38 months. This is significantly lower compared to the mean age of implantation of implantees that use non-oral communication and attend non-mainstream education. Simple logistic regression analysis shows age of implantation reliably predicts implantees (N = 126) would communicate using oral communication with odds ratio of 0.974, and also predict mainstream education (N = 118) with odds ratio of 0.967. The median score of PEACH rating scale is 87.5% in quiet, and this significantly correlates with an earlier age of implantation (r = -0.235 p = 0.048).

CONCLUSIONS: UKM Cochlear Implant Program has achieved reasonable success among the pediatric implantees, with better outcomes seen in those implanted at the age of less than 4 years old.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

MeSH terms
Similar publications