Early Cochlear Implants Help Speech Most

Cochlear implants improve deaf children’s speech most rapidly if they are put in before age 18 months, a new study concludes. These electronic devices pick up sound signals and send them to the auditory nerve and then the brain. They bypass the parts of the ear that don’t work. The study included 285 young children. About 2 out of 3 were deaf or had severe hearing impairment. These children received cochlear implants before age 5. The other children had normal hearing. Researchers tested speech before and after implants for children who received them. They kept track of everyone’s speech development for three years. Children with implants improved more than their pre-implant scores would have predicted. The earlier they got implants, the faster they improved. They did not achieve normal speech scores, however.