Cortical Auditory Evoked Potentials to Evaluate Cochlear Implant Candidacy in an Ear With Long-standing Hearing Loss

Abstract

Objectives:

We describe a novel use of cortical auditory evoked potentials in the preoperative workup to determine ear candidacy for cochlear implantation.

Methods:

A 71-year-old male was evaluated who had a long-deafened right ear, had never worn a hearing aid in that ear, and relied heavily on use of a left-sided hearing aid. Electroencephalographic testing was performed using free field auditory stimulation of each ear independently with pure tones at 1000 and 2000 Hz at approximately 10 dB above pure-tone thresholds for each frequency and for each ear.

Results:

Mature cortical potentials were identified through auditory stimulation of the long-deafened ear. The patient underwent successful implantation of that ear. He experienced progressively improving aided pure-tone thresholds and binaural speech recognition benefit (AzBio score of 74%).

Conclusions:

Findings suggest that use of cortical auditory evoked potentials may serve a preoperative role in ear selection prior to cochlear implantation.