Language development in children from a public cochlear implant program.

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate the rate of loss to follow-up in a cochlear implant program from the public health system in Southern Brazil as well as the characteristics of hearing loss, sociodemographic, sociocultural and the development of oral language in children with prelingual deafness.

METHODS

Retrospective cohort study with children who underwent CI surgery between 2010 and 2020. Data was collected through of interviews and review of medical records. The language development assessment was performed using the MUSS, MAIS and IT-MAIS scales. For the classification of language development, we used as parameters the values (mean ± SD) found in a previous national study. From those values, the Z-score for each patient at each hearing age (time of experience with the cochlear implant) was calculated.

RESULTS

Of the 225 children implanted between 2010-2020, 129 were included in this study. The rate of loss to follow-up in the program was 42.6%. The mean age at first surgery was 40.5 (±16.9) months, with 77.5% of patients having received a unilateral implant. Language results below the expected for hearing age (<Z-score-1) for the MAIS score were found in 59.7% of the sample, while for the MUSS score the proportion was 62%.

CONCLUSIONS

Most patients had an elevated mean age at cochlear implantation and there was a high rate of loss to follow-up and low attendance to speech and programming sessions. An overall poor language performance was found for this pediatric cochlear implant program from the public health system in Southern Brazil.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Level 3 (Non-randomized cohort study).