Background: The majority of research on the effects of cochlear implants has been on clinical evaluations of efficacy (hearing and speech skills, and auditory thresholds). But it's unclear how much clinical efficacy metrics (speech, hearing, and language tests) actually demonstrate how beneficial cochlear implants (CI) are in everyday circumstances.

Objective: this study aimd to assess the performance of a child's current CI with both subjective and functional outcomes measures. Also, we aimed to assess factors affecting these outcomes after CI.

 Patients and Methods: The study group included 45 cochlear implanted children, their chronological age range between 4 to 12 years. Children were divided according to their language age into three groups, group 1(G1) includes15 children with a language age of less than two years, group 2(G2) includes 15 children with a language age of two to less than four years, and Group 3(G3) includes 15 children with language age four to six years. Assessment was done in two sessions, one for phoniatric evaluation and another for audiological evaluation.

Results: CI enabled children to develop speech perception in a closed manner evidenced by the early speech perception (ESP) test with pattern perception being the easiest and monosyllabic words being the most difficult and the least to develop. Most children with CI were able to control their voice, to a lesser extent to use speech in meaningful use in social situations and to develop communication strategies in oral situations which were the least to develop, this was evident by Meaningful use of speech Scale. Children with CI were able to acquire language and their chronological age.

Conclusion: The cochlear implant is an effective rehabilitative tool for the treatment of prelingually deafened children and this was evident by our results. A hierarchal approach of speech assessment according to the language age of the child and selection of age-appropriate speech perception test is very important to assess cochlear implanted children Speech recognition had a high degree of variability. Early implantation age and increased duration of implant experience were the most important factors associated with good performance with CI, better speech perception, and better language outcomes.

Background: Cochlear implants made a great impact in the management of severe-to-profound hearing loss in both children and adults. Its greatest impact is in helping children born with a profound hearing loss and implanted early to attend mainstream education and using spoken language to communicate. However, the final outcome in pediatric implantation is not predictable as there are large numbers of factors which will affect the outcome of cochlear implantation. Studying these determinants increases the ability of clinicians to offer educated preoperative prognosis and might potentially allow for manipulation of variables in an attempt to achieve the best possible outcome.

Objective: The aim of this study was to assess the preoperative factors affecting the audiological, speech, and language outcomes achieved by the recipients of cochlear implants.

Methodology: A total of 39 children with severe-to-profound sensory neural hearing loss were implanted with cochlear implants. Children had received their implants before age of 5 years. Tests of receptive, expressive language quotient, aided cortical auditory-evoked potential using speech stimulus, aided free field audiometry, and aided speech reception thresholds were administered. Characteristics of the child and the family (age before implant and duration of implant use, cause of hearing loss, preimplant use of hearing aids and language therapy, and sociodemographic characteristics of their families) were the preoperative variables. These variables were considered predictors of audiological and language outcomes achieved by children and were determined using statistical analysis by univariate and multivariate analyses.

Results: Age of the studied children at time of cochlear implantation was statistically significant predictor for CI outcome as regard receptive language quotient and also for N1 latency. Hearing age of the studied children was a statistically significant predictor for CI outcome as regards P1 latency.

Conclusion:  Based on our findings, two most important factors affecting outcome of cochlear implantation were the age at implantation and the hearing age. Other factors were important but did not affect the outcome significantly.