Speech intelligibility of children with multichannel cochlear implants.

The purpose of this longitudinal study is to document improvements in speech intelligibility in children who have received multichannel cochlear implants, to compare their performance to that of a matched group of children with different levels of hearing loss who use conventional hearing aids. Speech intelligibility was measured by panels of listeners who analyzed recorded speech samples preimplant and at 6-month intervals following implantation. The results of this study demonstrate that prelingually deafened children with the Nucleus multichannel cochlear implant achieved significant improvements in speech intelligibility. By the 4.5- to 7.5-year intervals, the speech intelligibility exceeded 40%.