Auditory brainstem implant: Changes in the wearing threshold over one year
聴性脳幹インプラント埋め込み術:術後1年の経過について

Mitsuyoshi Imaizumi, Takamichi Matsui, Koshi Otsuki, Daisuke Kikuchi, Jun Sakuma, Shigeyuki Murono
2019 Otology Japan  
An auditory brainstem implant (ABI) helps hearing-impaired patients reacquire auditory sensation through electrical stimulation of auditory neurons of the cochlear nucleus. ABI was originally designed for patients with neurofibromatosis type 2 (NF2), which is characterized by bilateral acoustic neuromas. Tumor resection often results in severe damage to the auditory nerve. Therefore, cochlear implantation is contraindicated in these patients. Here, we report a patient implanted with ABI after
more » ... rgery for NF2. A 44-year-old woman was admitted to our hospital with NF2 and developed profound hearing loss after surgery. In the speech recognition test CI2004, without and with lip reading, the word recognition scores were 0% and 32%, respectively, and the sentence recognition scores were 0% and 46%, respectively. ABI surgery was performed. After one postoperative year, a speech discrimination test was performed. She acquired a hearing ability of 35-55 dB with environmental sounds. In ABI, without and with lip reading, the word recognition scores were 4% and 68%, respectively, and the sentence recognition scores were 0% and 43%, respectively. She showed improvement in speech recognition compared to the preoperative condition. ABI might be the only option for patients with NF2 who have profound hearing loss after tumor resection to regain some hearing ability, although the word and sentence recognition scores in ABI without lip reading were low.
doi:10.11289/otoljpn.29.245 fatcat:d5vkezakefcffptizjmjukdsbe