Introduction:
The cochlear implant is the treatment of choice of severe hearing impaired patients. It has proven to be safe and effective concerning speech understanding even in the elderly. However, the effect on the quality of life of older deaf patients has not been sufficiently evaluated yet.
Methods:
We have conducted a prospective study on a group of 27 consecutive patients between the age of 70 to 79 years. The WHOQL-old with its subgroups sensory abilities, autonomy, past, present and future activities, social participation, death and dying, intimacy and a total score was used to evaluate the quality of life.
The patients were interviewed three times: prior surgery, at the time of the first fitting of the speech processor and after six months.
Results:
All 27 patients were deaf on both ears and were implanted unilaterally. Concerning the total score we could find a highly significant improvement in quality of life starting from 61.0 points preoperatively to 67.4 points after half a year (p = 0.002). At the time of activation of the speech processor we observed a slight deterioration to 57.3 points which proved to be nonsignificant (p = 0.072).
Conclusion:
In conclusion our results demonstrate the positive influence of hearing rehabilitation by means of a cochlear implant on the quality of life in older patients. It is important to emphasize that there was no substantial decrease of the quality of life during the whole observation period. Obviously the surgery and the time postoperatively till first fitting did not adversely influence the general attitude of the patients. In general the method of cochlear implantation seems to be beneficial even for the group of older people with significant multimorbidity.
