Evaluation of the speech perception in the noise in different positions in adults with cochlear implants

Introduction: The most frequent complaint of the cochlear implant users has been to recognize and understand the speech signal in the presence of noise. Researches have been developed on the speech perception of users of cochlear implant with focus on aspects such as the effect of the reduction to the signal/noise ratio in the speech perception, the speech recognition in the noise, with different types of cochlear implant and strategies of speech codification and the effects of the binaural stimulation in the speech perception in noise. Objective: 1-To assess the speech perception in cochlear implant adult users in different positions regarding the presentation of the stimulus, 2-to compare the index of speech recognition in the frontal, ipsilateral and contralateral positions and 3-to analyze the effect of monoaural adaptation in the speech perception with noise. Method: 22 cochlear implant adult users were evaluated regarding the speech perception. The individuals were submitted to sentences recognition evaluation, with competitive noise in the signal/noise ratio +10 decibels in three positions: frontal, ipsilateral and contralateral to the cochlear implant side. Results: The results demonstrated the largest index of speech recognition in the ipsilateral position (100%) and the lowest index of speech recognition with sentences in the contralateral position (5%). Conclusion: The performance of speech perception in cochlear implant users is damaged when the competitive noise is introduced, the index of speech recognition is better when the speech is presented ipsilaterally, and it's consequently worse when presented contralaterally to the cochlear implant, and there are more damages in the speech intelligibility when there is only monoaural input