Clinical Utility of Residual Hearing in the Cochlear Implant Ear

Cochlear Implantation often results in loss of any remaining hearing that may have been present prior to the surgery and the patient uses only the cochlear implant to hear. Saving the remaining hearing is important because it can allow a recipient to also utilize a hearing aid in that ear in addition to the cochlear implant, termed electro-acoustic stimulation. Thus, the goals of this study are: 1) to determine the importance of electrocochleography in helping to save remaining hearing during the surgical procedure, 2) determine the benefit that a hearing aid and cochlear implant combination of listening impacts a patient's ability to understand speech compared to the traditional condition of using the cochlear implant alone without a hearing aid.