Clinical trial of the CLARION cochlear implant in children.

Preoperative and postoperative efficacy results are reported for the first 58 children with 18 months of implant experience in the United States. A within-subjects repeated-measures design was used to compare preoperative performance with hearing aids to postoperative performance with the CLARION Multi-Strategy Cochlear Implant. The results revealed significant improvement over time on all speech perception measures. Higher scores and faster rates of progress were demonstrated by the children who used oral communication compared to children who used total communication, especially older children. The overall results suggest higher levels of performance and more rapid progress in the development of listening skills than has been reported in previous clinical trials with children. The latter finding appears to be due to advances in implant technology and changes in the demographic characteristics of the study groups.