Otopathological findings in a patient with bilateral cochlear implants.

The death in 1976 of a patient who had a multiple-electrode cochlear implant in one cochlea and a single-electrode cochlear implant in the other provided a unique opportunity for both clinical and histological study of the effects of such implants in a human an subject. The patient was 68 years old at the time of his death. In 1969, at the age of 61, and after 11 years of profound deafness, apparently as a result of lues, the patient was implanted on the left side with a hard-wired 5-wire multiple-electrode cochlear implant. Five years later, his right side was implanted with a single-electrode induction coil cochlear implant. Audiological and psychoacoustic studies were performed by a number of investigators. The results are reviewed. Following the patient's death, his temporal bones were obtained and examined using microdissection techniques followed by serial sectioning. The histological findings are described.