Impact of unilateral vs. bilateral evaluation on cochlear implant candidacy.

BACKGROUND: The indication criteria for cochlear implantation differ considerably across regions.

OBJECTIVES: To estimate the effects of different candidacy criteria on the number of cochlear implant (CI) candidates.

METHODS: We analysed a very large clinical audiological database comprising pure-tone thresholds and speech-audiometric data in order to identify CI candidates on the basis of different audiometric candidacy criteria. In particular, we simulated the effects of three different CI candidacy criteria.

RESULTS: The bilateral evaluation of CI candidacy has the strongest influence on the number of potential CI candidates. Additionally, the cut-off criteria for middle-ear implants have a large effect on numbers of candidates when air conduction has deteriorated.Conclusions and Significance: Expanding the indication criteria opens up the possibility of improving the accurate identification of individual cases suitable for cochlear-implant provision.