Effect of gender on the hearing performance of adult cochlear implant patients.

Abstract

To evaluate the role of gender on the hearing performance of postlingually deafened adult patients with cochlear implants. Individual retrospective cohort study. There were 638 postlingually deafened adults (280 men and 358 women) selected for a retrospective evaluation of their hearing performance with cochlear implants. Both genders underwent the same surgical and rehabilitative procedures and benefited from the latest technological advances available. There was no significant difference in the age, duration of deafness, and preoperative hearing performance between the genders. The test battery was composed of the Freiburger Monosyllabic Test, Speech Tracking, and the Hochmair-Schulz-Moser (HSM) sentence test in quiet and in 10-dB noise. The results of 5 years of follow-up are presented here. Genders showed a similar performance in Freiburger Monosyllabic Test and Speech Tracking Test. However, in the HSM test in noise, men performed slightly better than women in all of the follow-up sessions, which was statistically significant at 2 and 4 years after implantation. Although normal-hearing women use more predictive cognitive strategies in speech comprehension and are supposed to have a more efficient declarative memory system, this may not necessarily lead to a better adaptation to the altered auditory information delivered by a cochlear implant. Our study showed that in more complex listening situations such as speech tests in noise, men tend to perform slightly better than women. Gender may have an influence on the hearing performance of postlingually deafened adults with cochlear implants.