The effect of cochlear implantation and post-operative rehabilitation on acoustic voice analysis in post-lingual hearing impaired adults

Post-lingual deaf adults can develop some vocal abnormalities similar to those developed in pre-lingual deaf individuals. The aim of this work was to study the effect of cochlear implantation followed by post-operative rehabilitation on voice acoustics in post-lingual hearing impaired adults with different durations of hearing loss. The study included 35 post-lingual hearing impaired adults who underwent cochlear implantation. Patients were divided into two groups according to the duration of their hearing loss. Each group was further divided into two subgroups according to whether they received auditory rehabilitation or not. Using the Multi-Dimensional Voice Program (MDVP) parameters, comparisons were made between each subgroup of patients and the normal MDVP Saudi database, and between subgroups of patients. Most of the patients in the two groups reported significant improvement in their MDVP results post-implantation. Further, significantly deviant MDVP parameters were reported in the group of patients with longer duration of hearing loss. Patients who received rehabilitation significantly improved more than those who did not. In conclusion, it appears that cochlear implantation improves the auditory control of voice production in post-lingual deaf adults. Also, it is obvious that cochlear implantation at an early stage of hearing loss gives better results on voice control, especially if augmented with auditory rehabilitation.