Learning Objectives:
Objective: To explore auditory outcome of cochlear implantation (CI) performed in patients diagnosed with vestibular schwannoma (VS) in the only-hearing ear.
Patients and methods: A retrospective analysis of three cases is carried out. All study participants have a long history of hearing loss on the one side and a newly-presented symptom of a gradual hearing loss due to VS on the other side, who then received ipsilateral, contralateral or bilateral CI. Imaging examination and audiological tests were carried out before operation. Hearing outcomes were measured by the pure tone audiogram (PTA) and the open set speech discrimination score (SDS). Mean follow-up time was 18 months.
Results: During follow-up period, none of the three patients had a remarkable improvement in their speech recognition, whether got unilateral or bilateral CI. However, PTA showed positive results in all of the three cases, which conferred an awareness of environmental sounds and was an adjuvant to lip reading. The patient with bilateral CI showed significantly better performance on the open set speech perception compared to the other two patients with unilateral CI, especially in noise.
Conclusions: CI meets the goals of lower PTA, improved lip reading and perception of environmental sounds. However, SDS is not significantly improved after CI. Bilateral CI is more beneficial than unilateral CI on either side.