Abstract
Unilateral severe-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL), also known as single
sided deafness (SSD), is a problem that affects both children and adults, and can
have severe and detrimental effects on multiple aspects of life including music appreciation,
speech understanding in noise, speech and language acquisition, performance in the
classroom and/or the workplace, and quality of life. Additionally, the loss of binaural
hearing in SSD patients affects those processes that rely on two functional ears including
sound localization, binaural squelch and summation, and the head shadow effect. Over
the last decade, there has been increasing interest in cochlear implantation for SSD
to restore binaural hearing. Early data are promising that cochlear implantation for
SSD can help to restore binaural functionality, improve quality of life, and may faciliate
reversal of neuroplasticity related to auditory deprivation in the pediatric population.
Additionally, this new patient population has allowed researchers the opportunity
to investigate the age-old question “what does a cochlear implant (CI) sound like?.”
Keywords
cochlear implant - insertion depth - single-sided deafness - hearing loss - binaural
hearing - sound quality - vestibular schwannoma
