Cochlea implant in patients with superficial siderosis

Introduction Superficial siderosis is a subform of hemosiderosis, in which hemosiderin deposits in the central nervous system and cause damage to nerve cells. The cause of this form of siderosis are chronic cerebral hemorrhage in particular subarachnoid bleeding. The diversity of symptoms depends on the respective damage in the brain, but in most cases it appears of beginning uni- or bilateral hearing loss, ataxia and pyramid signs. We are looking into whether cochlear implantation is a therapy option for patients with superficial siderosis.

Material and Method In the period from 2009 to 2018, we examined (n = 10) patients with radiologically secured central siderose. Of these ten patients, four were treated with a cochlear implant due to high-grade hearing loss. Here we compared pre- and postoperative language comprehension (Freiburg language intelligibility test for einsilver and HSM sentence test).

Result Comparing the language comprehension of these patients, the average improvement in speech comprehension improved by 20 % at rest (single-silver test in the Freiburg speech intelligibility test) and by 40 % in noise (HSM rate test).

Discussion The results show that patients with superficial siderosis benefit from CI supply with better speech comprehension. The results are below the average of all postlingual deaf CI patients. This makes it clear that the presence of a central hearing loss must be detected by the clinic and the diagnostics and that no contraindications should be concluded from it. It is important to correctly weigh up patients' expectations.

Poster-PDF A-1575.PDF

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Artikel online veröffentlicht:
10. Juni 2020