Bimodal hearing in asymmetrical hearing loss: prospective study in patients with same CI and HA devices

With progressive expansion in candidacy criteria for CI, it is increasingly common to implant candidates with severe to profound hearing loss in one side and substantial acoustic hearing in the contralateral hear (Mild-moderate HL up to 500Hz and severe to profound > 1000 Hz). These patient typically display > 50% sentences recognition in quiet and poor recognition in noise. One critical factor is the long duration of hearing loss with variable deprivation of the implanted side. It has been shown how the better the residual hearing in the ear with the hearing aid, the greater were the benefits obtained with bilateralism–binaurality, although there is a critical central integration, perceptual loudness balancing and pitch perception difference that increase the mismatching between electric and acoustic hearing. One of the issue brought in favor of maintaining the acoustic stimulation is the ability to provide quality information on the Fundamental frequency(F0), improving the perception of timber and low-frequency fine-structure information. The aim of the present study was to assess the bimodal benefit in a cohort of patients using the same CI and HA, in order to assess bimodal benefit in quiet and in noise, and correlation of F0 perception with perception in noise