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Evaluation Process for CIs - Your experience?

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In reply to @Dani

Thanks Dani.

Yes, my wife is supporting me doing whatever is needed to hear her better.

When I tell her about the members here on the forum who have had ’s and the results every one of them have had it makes her hopeful. When I got the first evaluation and explained how the forum members frowned on how the evaluation was done she immediately said “get a second opinion “.

In reply to @Dani

@Dani said:

They did several tests and then said I am already late. At the hospital they did sentence-recognition tests with and w/o noise. Till today my test result in the booth are the same as pre-op. But in real life it’s a different like day and night.

Awesome to hear that despite same booth test results you have different usability. Probably because you don’t have distortions or something but clear electric impulse that brain can interpret. Who knows, it’s important that you’re happy and it works :smiley:

Can you just share, if for last 4 years the results are the same, why then they told you’re late?
Did they give some more information about that?

@Raudrive keep us posted and I’m happy for you that you have wife’s full support!

Edited

My assessment was a 2 hour rigorous, exhausting thorough testing of my current level of hearing.

Audiogram with Aids

WRS with aids
Sentence Recognition
Sentence recognition with aids
WRS with white noise
Sentence recognition with white noise
Both WRS & sentence recognition with white noise and aids.
Tympanigram

Then followed up with an and . I wasn’t given an answer that day, I had to come back a month later. Why because my L ear had been profoundly deaf for 6 & 2/3 decades. All my results were taken to the Audiologists monthly meeting and discussed which ear would be best to do, if any.
Results WRS aided 22% L ear & 26% R ear. With white noise I got 24% both ears.

On the same day I saw the surgeon. A month later the results came back as yes I was a suitable candidate. But I still sat on the fence, do I or don’t I, for a further 18 months.

Thanks for sharing this!

I wonder why they didn’t do some special test that shows if nerve is working but only cochlea is not.

I read that only if your cochlea is damaged you can be candidate but not if your nerve is damaged.

I forgot the exact name what has to be tested - brainstem response, otoacustic emissions or something else that I’ve forgot and is the right one.

But maybe they do additional tests only based on the feedback from you combined with those results above, and they didn’t get any indication that nerve could be damaged.

I mean, it definitely isn’t damaged since you got such great results with CI so far :smiley:

It’s just that I’d like to know how did they determine that, so that I can be a bit smarter for my case where in best case scenario CI is already smiling at me sometime in the future. :slight_smile:

@Blacky an can pick up if nerves are damaged beyond repair or if they are normal.
They also hummed and harred about doing a balance test. Which they decided not to do, I’ve heard some horrible stories about this test.

@phobos512 what’s full name of ?
Edit: never mind, found. :smiley:

@Deaf_piper hm, interesting. I knew only about checking for acoustic neuroma as a cause of damaged nerve that can be seen on . I got that check but no one mentioned status of the nerves. But it could be that audiologist with MRI understanding can see better than general MRI doctor who writes reports.

What was that horrible balance test? I got several, water in ears, dark room, I think they flipped me a bit around on some special chair, and stuff but I’d definitely not describe them as horrible.

Boring, definitely. Ok, and lady kept yelling at me (I couldn’t understand her if she just said, too quiet) to stare directly in front - pitch black room with pitch black glasses, zero reference points, I didn’t even know that I moved my eyes, it was that boring :joy:

Ok in my case they didn’t need them, it was enough if I close my eyes with hands spread forward, and I’ll start falling after several seconds :joy: they did that plus me walking through the corridor with eyes closed. I’d say nothing special all in all. And now I’m curious, if they’re the same, what could go wrong with them?

In reply to @Deaf_piper

Reading this post really explains how I got a short changed evaluation. Thanks for taking the time to explain.
I am waiting for the second opinion evaluation at this time. The Cochlear representative I have been in contact with who is arranging the second evaluation has told me I should easily qualify for CI.
Thanks again.

Check earlier post with attachments.
I was tested ok but not with noise. Told to really try hard guessing. That was also not the right thing to do.

It looks like it didn’t show me the pic before, I remember discussion about not trying too hard, that’s what I’m doing now, I do not guess word, I repeat sounds I get.

I see on paper it says ‘or’, but it really doesn’t make sense.
You have great brain since it could get 69% out of that poor hearing, but that’s because of context of a sentence and more time.

Wrs shows better how messed up our ears really are. Especially wrs in noise.

I have 100% on left ear at normal volume in quiet, but put me in white noise, with both ears unaided I’m at 60%, with aided at 80%. Put me in babble type of noise and I can only pretend I’m following conversation. But they don’t measure that. We’d be lucky if our background noise would only be like white noise.

I’d expect that idea of aids and as well is that we don’t have to have superhuman brains and suffer with understanding, if there’s tech to help us relieve some of that strain from us.

You’re lucky that your brain is so good, when it comes to time until now, but it looks like CI candidacy tests aren’t made for smart brains. And one asks how hard it was.

Listening shouldn’t be hard unless you’re in a disco / big bday party / wedding reception with rock band noise type of situation, and then they keep telling us that having 60% is great. While almost all of them have 100 or so.

It’s not that they’re paying for it out of their pocket, you are, through your insurance premiums.

Hell, if someone could guarantee me that I could get an op and get close to 100% for 30k eur, I’d take a loan like yesterday.

I keep my fingers crossed that you get fair evaluation next time. :crossed_fingers:

I don’t think it’s all about the money; I think a lot of it is that very real risk of destroying the residual hearing. Yes, you might get 90+% recognition back with a , but is the average person going to be happy with that being their only means of hearing? Maybe, maybe not. If medical science ever figures out what really causes folks to lose their residual hearing during surgery and/or randomly after the fact, then I’d expect to see CI application broaden (there are plenty of articles out about how many of the folks who would qualify for CIs today still don’t get them). They know some of it is physical trauma from the electrode insertion, but I’ve read tons of studies that can find no meaningful correlation between residual hearing loss and anything during the surgery or after. For now, it’s a risk you’re taking every time, and I think the assumption is for the average person that risk may not be acceptable. For me, it was. Not knowing where the progressive loss was going to go, I was totally willing to go for it. I have near as I can tell no residual hearing in the operated ear. Hopefully that’ll be a nonissue once I’m activated. And yes, I will still do the other ear. It’s only now I realize just how crappy my hearing really is. It could easily have gotten worse since the last test. I wouldn’t be surprised, as my day to day word recognition is in the toilet; I can’t understand anything my wife says first pass at this point.

Something else to add is the possibility of losing tinnitus. I have read it is a hit and miss about losing tinnitus. That’s another plus on my side.

Yeah, total hit or miss. There’s a topic about this on the forum; one user commented that they actually started having it after they got their . Most folks on the forum report no effect, or a positive effect, at least while actively wearing the processor. I know I’m hoping for some positive effect myself; as my hearing has gotten worse so has my tinnitus. Though I have had it for as long as I can remember.

In reply to @phobos512

I would understand that concern if they do some test for that or ask you for your expectations.

But if someone’s best with is 60, 50, in quiet, in white noise, in speech babble, how on earth can anyone say that’s acceptable?

And I seriously doubt that there’s any person who wouldn’t change their below 60 for 90+ and they’re applying for . Under assumption they’re not forced into it, of course.

What’s use of residual hearing if it’s only number on paper and not useful to you in everyday situations? I don’t get that, what I’m missing?

About realising how crappy one ear is now, I’ve read bunch of articles on topic should you get two HAs even if one ear is almost useless. The clear answer is yes, because it seems that our brain can use a lot even from broken and partial information, and old practice of aiding only better ear is hopefully coming to an end.
Together with ‘oh you have one good ear, then you’re fine’. How yes no :joy:

So don’t worry, I don’t expect your non CI ear got worse, it just that your brain has less to work with and it’s showing it clearly.

Well remember, I have a progressive loss, so it getting worse wouldn’t be at all abnormal for my experience.

work for most people but not for everyone. When you’re talking about potentially hearing nothing, and hearing 60% of whatever there is, that sounds pretty risky, no? It’s a small risk, but it’s still a risk. Ultimately though, any percentage of word recognition score you choose is going to be an arbitrary measure. I don’t know a lot about the history of CIs but I know there was a time where you had to basically be completely deaf to get one. The criteria has evolved over time, and will more than likely continue to do so.

Ok, so results can vary from 0 to 100 but currently results are usually in the higher area, or?

Is there anything in your history that leads to better or worse results? Please, gimme links, I don’t expect that you write me everything. But I’ve read a bunch of CI forum here, so it skewed my perspective. Since you all here have great results :joy:

Or I didn’t went long enough in the past posts…

I’m not quite sure I follow you. I think you’re asking about typical performance of …Most folks who get them seem to do really well. My own surgeon/audiologist have seen folks with in the teens get into the 90s post-CI. I also know folks on this and other forums that have had those great results. But I’ve also read of folks that have had really bad side effects, permanent loss of taste, facial nerve issues, dizziness, an inability to get good speech recognition, that sort of thing. These tend to be in folks who’ve been deaf for their whole lives who try a CI later in life, or who have other medical issues in concert with their hearing loss.

Thanks! You nailed it! So it seems, the sooner you get it, the better unless you have some underlying condition that could mess it up completely.

And then we’re back on the initial question - why hold people from getting it if there’s no underlying issue.

But, maybe the line ‘how long is too long’ isn’t clear so they err on the safe side…

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The Secret Deafie is a regular column about deaf experiences submitted anonymously by different contributors. If you have a story you’d like to tell, just email thelimpingchicken@gmail.com So we al…

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I hadn’t planned to write about it, but I feel like I can’t be silent (pun may be intended, but my subconscious isn’t telling me) about this issue. Before I dive into what I hope will be a short post…

Those are two I’ve seen before; I wasn’t keeping track of the negative stuff I’d read so I don’t have links handy (and the positives far, far outweigh the negatives from what I’ve found).

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