December 2008: Telephone with Confidence Program for CI recipients

For more than 25 years, Cochlear has delivered unsurpassed hearing performance
with the most reliable implant devices on the market.

Dear Colleague,
Cochlear is pleased to bring you the final newsletter for the year 2008.  Happy Holidays!

Clinic-to-Clinic Tip

A clinic in the St. Louis, MO area provided us with this week’s excellent tip.

"When cochlear implant recipients are shopping for cell phones, we recommend that they test different phones in the store using the "Phone with Confidence" training found on Cochlear's website. With different phones, they call 1-800-458-4999 to listen to the recordings of short stories and single words. This has been a great tool to help recipients pick the right phone for them."

Thank you for this useful tip. The "Telephone with Confidence Program" is a service that allows the Cochlear Community members to build their confidence with all phones by listening to recordings on the phone and read the text on the computer screen at the same time. This free service can be found online at www.cochlearcommunity.com. The users have to register to the community before they can use the visual component of the tool. Anyone can call the free 1-800-458-4999 number to simply listen to the recordings of the Telephone with Confidence Program.
If you have tips that you would like to share, please submit them to awollan@cochlear.com.

Technology Spotlight

Scientists at Cochlear's Denver Research Laboratory are investigating if modifications to the clinical fitting of bilateral cochlear implants can further improve binaural abilities.  One approach they are examining to guide bilateral fitting uses inter-ear pitch comparisons.

The present study examines electrode-by-electrode inter-ear pitch comparisons for users of Nucleus cochlear implants.  At least some subjects in this study have shown dramatic differences between their electrode pitch comparisons and the frequency allocation tables they have used.  For these subjects, adjustments are being made to the frequency allocation tables to see if re-aligned maps provide improvements to speech perception and quality.

Preliminary data will be presented at the 2009 Association for Research in Otolaryngology Mid-Winter Meeting and the research is on-going.  (From Long CJ, Parkinson WS, Smith ZM, van den Honert C, 2009. Bilateral Cochlear Implants: Interaural Pitch and Binaural Abilities. 2009 ARO Mid-Winter Meeting)

Thank you for reading and your continued support

Cochlear