Development of a home-based auditory training to improve speech recognition on the telephone for patients with cochlear implants: a randomized trial

Abstract

Objectives

Speech recognition on the telephone poses a challenge for patients with cochlear implants due to a reduced bandwidth of transmission. This trial evaluates a home-based auditory training with telephone-specific filtered speech material to improve sentence recognition.

Design

Randomized controlled parallel double-blind.

Setting

One tertiary referral center.

Participants

20 postlingually deafened patients with cochlear implants.

Main outcome measures

Primary outcome measure was sentence recognition assessed by a modified version of the Oldenburg Sentence Test filtered to the telephone bandwidth of 0.3 to 3.4 kHz. Additionally pure tone thresholds, recognition of monosyllables and subjective hearing benefit were acquired at two separate visits before and after a home based training period of 10-14 weeks. For training, patients received a CD with speech material, either unmodified for the unfiltered training group or filtered to the telephone bandwidth in the filtered group.

Results

Patients in the unfiltered training group achieved an average sentence recognition score of 70.0 % ± 13.6% (mean ± standard deviation) before and 73.6% ± 16.5% after training. Patients in the filtered training group achieved 70.7% ± 13.8% and 78.9% ± 7.0%, a statistically significant difference (p = 0.034, t₁₀ = 2.292; 2 way RM ANOVA/Bonferroni). An increase in the recognition of monosyllabic words was noted in both groups. The subjective benefit was positive for filtered and negative for unfiltered training.

Conclusions

Auditory training with specifically filtered speech material provided an improvement in sentence recognition on the telephone compared to training with unfiltered material.

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