Medicare criteria for cochlear implant candidacy were recently relaxed to include
people with aided sentence recognition ability of 40% or poorer. However, these criteria
are still more stringent than the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines. The
department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is in a unique situation to examine this population.
A large proportion of VA patients are 65 years and older and VA Cochlear Implant Clinical
Practice Guidelines recommend the use of FDA guidelines for cochlear implant candidacy.
Therefore, VA centers are able to implant patients 65 and older with aided preoperative
sentence scores up to 60%. This retrospective study of VA patients revealed that the
majority performed better postoperatively than the current Medicare preoperative criteria.
Cochlear implant - speech recognition ability - severe to profound hearing loss -
older adults - FDA guidelines