The relationship between wave V of the ABR and speech recognition threshold outcomes in children

Given the increasing number of cochlear implant patients from ages 12 months through 2 years 11 months, the ability to determine post-operative speech outcomes is a highly sought after yet unpredictable measure to help determine cochlear implant candidacy in children. While there are several predictive measures of speech outcomes in adults’ post-cochlear implantation, the need to better predict this variable in children can be a useful tool, if ever identified. The purpose of this study was to determine if the presence of a pre-operative auditory brainstem response (ABR) wave V present at 90 dB nHL in pre-lingually deafened children will be related to speech awareness or recognition thresholds (SAT/SRT) post-operatively once they receive at least one cochlear implant. While improvements in speech reception thresholds were noted from the subjects’ one month follow up appointment to their last known appointment, these improvements were non-significant between the two group mean when they were compared to each other via a single-factor ANOVA test