Cochlear Implants: The Young People’s Perspective

Cochlear implantation is a relatively new procedure, which has already had significant impact on the lives of many pro-foundly deaf children and adults, in providing useful hearing to those unable to benefit significantly from hearing aids. After 16 years of cochlear implantation in the United King-dom, there is now a body of evidence covering a range of outcomes, much of which covers perceptual and linguistic outcomes. This study looks at the impact of cochlear im-plantation on a group of 29 young people aged 13–16 years, using a semistructured questionnaire. It examines issues from the perspective of the young people themselves, in-cluding their understanding of and degree of satisfaction with the way their implant works for them, their social and communication abilities and choices, their educational chal-lenges, and their identity. It concludes that the young people in this group feel positive toward their cochlear implants and the decisions made on their behalf by parents. Many have a flexible attitude to communication modes and an identity which is not fixed in terms of conventional descriptors. Pediatric implantation was first carried out in the United Kingdom in 1989, and since then, over 2,700 children have received implants in the United Kingdom, with over half the profoundly deaf children starting school now having a cochlear implan