Cochlear implant average aided scores: 40db?

Hear Again said:
I'm not sure, Bott. I would think that being able to hear at 35-40 dB would be acceptable since this falls within the speech banana.
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Thanks for answering, at least I am not the only one who doesn't know. :)
 
Bottesini said:
That level seems to be where speech is. I wondered why they want them to be in the 10-20db range, and Faire-Jour answered it is so much more than speech.

But that did not really answer my question at all. What is in those db range that they want her to hear? Since I thought speech was the point of the CI.:dunno:
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"F" and "th" sounds are quieter than 35 db. Also whispering. Plus, if you are only hearing at 40-60 db, than regular speech is literally the very quietest you can possibly hear. You wouldn't be able to understand it, just detect that it is there.
 
faire_jour said:
"F" and "th" sounds are quieter than 35 db. Also whispering. Plus, if you are only hearing at 40-60 db, than regular speech is literally the very quietest you can possibly hear. You wouldn't be able to understand it, just detect that it is there.
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Hmmm. When I had moderately-severe hearing loss, I was able to understand speech to some extent (in a quiet environment) without hearing aids especially if the speaker was male.
 
SkullChick said:
I hear speech at 15 db all across, pure tone at 30 db all across as well.
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I am curious how a person can hear speech before hearing a puretone. If you can't hear any puretones at 15db, how do you hear anything for speech? If you could hear anything at 15db, why didn't you respond to puretones at 15db?

deafskeptic said:
I hear at 20 dbs with my implant. With my HA I could only hear stuff at 40 dbs and sounds were much harder to understand.
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I checked your posting history and can't find much info about your CI story. I did find that you said you had 115db HL. What was your unaided/aided audiogram before CI? If you have some posts or a blog, could you share your success story? But anyway 20db is a very nice result, is this across all frequencies?

faire_jour said:
My daughter's audiologist said he will not rest until he gets a CI user to hear above 30 db. He is great and he takes his time, that is why I drive 2 hours each way to see him! He doesn't put up with 40 db, so I don't know why other audiologists would.
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Then all those who can't get 30db or better should see that audiologist. Does he know why some get only 50-60db best aided with CI? If those people have a damaged/ossified cochlea or auditory nerve, there might be nothing more that can be done. You need normal, healthy inner ear structures to get a good/excellent CI result. I talked to someone who got a CI and she says the surgeon can predict how well youll hear with a CI by doing a MRI and CAT scan and assessing how functional your inner ear structures are. This could be great for anyone deciding on CI, they could compare to what they currently hear with the best HAs. If the surgeon says "youll get only 50db aided with a CI" that person might want to stay with HAs


Daredevel7 said:
I wonder if an average of 40dB is best that a CI can do or this is after people have requested to reduce what they can hear. Because I think I hear high frequencies too well and need to reduce it. LadySekhmet even said the same about reducing the sensitivity. I'm willing to bet an average of 40dB is after all the adjustments, including reducing the sensitivites.


Also, Id like to add that my audiogram 2 months after getting a CI had an average of 30-40 dB but this was while I was in the "overstimulation" mode, basically my auditory nerve and brain was getting used to it still.
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It would not make sense to want to hear worse unless a better threshold was causing problems like headaches, dizziness, pains, hypersenesitivity, etc. As mentioned in my first post, this is one of the many factors that determine how well a CI recipant can ultimately hear. One of the posters(LadySekhmet) here got to 10db but her brain isn't yet used to all the stimulus so she had it reduced. Hopefully she gets used to 10db and can enjoy hearing so much that normally hearing people take for granted :D

Hear Again said:
Even if I could "only" hear at 35-40 dB with a CI, I wouldn't complain. It's better than the aided hearing I had pre-CI. (60-70 dB with NR at 1000 Hz and above)
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This is why you were a great CI candidate, you didn't have much residual hearing nor benefit from HAs. People who are getting in the 20db range with their HAs probably wouldn't be happy with 40db CI.

Daredevel7 said:
The thing is, that banana is the "speech range" right? Speech range INCLUDING noisy environments or whispering or any other non standard way of communicating? I am not sure, it's possible that when she gets older she will ask to move it to the 20-40 dB range?
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The further up in the speech banana, the better youll hear speech and sounds. Hearing at only 40db, you won't hear some consonants, such as S and F. I know I don't hear those two letters.

faire_jour said:
"F" and "th" sounds are quieter than 35 db. Also whispering. Plus, if you are only hearing at 40-60 db, than regular speech is literally the very quietest you can possibly hear. You wouldn't be able to understand it, just detect that it is there.
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One of the risks of a CI is ending up hearing 40db or worse and still not understanding most speech as well as missing alot of environmental sounds. If you lose enough residual hearing because of a CI, there's no plan B which is going back to HAs. I was born with hearing worse than what Miss kat had when she got a CI and I was able to be aided better than 40db(at least in the lower frequencies) with analog HAs. I could understand quite a bit of speech and I speak clearly. May I ask why Miss Kat did so poorly with HAs despite having a significent deal of residual hearing? :hmm:

Hear Again said:
Hmmm. When I had moderately-severe hearing loss, I was able to understand speech to some extent (in a quiet environment) without hearing aids especially if the speaker was male.
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This is why I think it's crazy for anyone with moderate-severe hearing to think about CI, much less go thru with it. They would not be "deaf" unaided and when aided, hear normally. Even Miss Kat was able to be aided to 15db when her hearing was moderate-severe. It's when her hearing became severe-profound that she did poorly with HAs(although I don't understand why, since my hearing is much worse and I am doing much better)
 
deafdude1 said:
It would not make sense to want to hear worse unless a better threshold was causing problems like headaches, dizziness, pains, hypersenesitivity, etc. As mentioned in my first post, this is one of the many factors that determine how well a CI recipant can ultimately hear. One of the posters(LadySekhmet) here got to 10db but her brain isn't yet used to all the stimulus so she had it reduced. Hopefully she gets used to 10db and can enjoy hearing so much that normally hearing people take for granted
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First, it's not that I want to "hear worse". I just do not want to hear all the EXTRA crap that I do not need to hear that hearing people can hear. At 10db - I was able to hear the buzzing of the lightbulbs. I was able to hear the electric-static sounds coming from plugs. I was able to hear the traffic on a highway from 5 miles away. I was able to hear my cat take a dump in the litterbox and scratching the litter. Hearing people have the ability to filter it out, but for some reason, I can't. I am a little hypersensitive to those sounds. Maybe eventually I will have my DR increased (it was 26 when I was activated..it's now 42), and turned up.


As faire-jour said - it is much more than just hearing at the speech banana. There's many sounds that are in the upper range - the quiet sounds. I wished there was a list somewhere on the web of pretty much ALL of the sounds and their max db level.

For example - someone who can hear 30db or below will not be able to hear the crickets/certain bird sounds/leaves rustling from a distance. There's a difference between hearing them right close by and at a distance. The softer sounds that are heard in the distance are in the 20 to 10 db range.

Correct me if I'm wrong. :)
 
LadySekhmet said:
First, it's not that I want to "hear worse". I just do not want to hear all the EXTRA crap that I do not need to hear that hearing people can hear. At 10db - I was able to hear the buzzing of the lightbulbs. I was able to hear the electric-static sounds coming from plugs. I was able to hear the traffic on a highway from 5 miles away. I was able to hear my cat take a dump in the litterbox and scratching the litter. Hearing people have the ability to filter it out, but for some reason, I can't. I am a little hypersensitive to those sounds. Maybe eventually I will have my DR increased (it was 26 when I was activated..it's now 42), and turned up.


As faire-jour said - it is much more than just hearing at the speech banana. There's many sounds that are in the upper range - the quiet sounds. I wished there was a list somewhere on the web of pretty much ALL of the sounds and their max db level.

For example - someone who can hear 30db or below will not be able to hear the crickets/certain bird sounds/leaves rustling from a distance. There's a difference between hearing them right close by and at a distance. The softer sounds that are heard in the distance are in the 20 to 10 db range.

Correct me if I'm wrong. :)
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That's interesting. That is actually what I was wondering about.
 
LadySekhmet said:
First, it's not that I want to "hear worse". I just do not want to hear all the EXTRA crap that I do not need to hear that hearing people can hear. At 10db - I was able to hear the buzzing of the lightbulbs. I was able to hear the electric-static sounds coming from plugs. I was able to hear the traffic on a highway from 5 miles away. I was able to hear my cat take a dump in the litterbox and scratching the litter. Hearing people have the ability to filter it out, but for some reason, I can't. I am a little hypersensitive to those sounds. Maybe eventually I will have my DR increased (it was 26 when I was activated..it's now 42), and turned up.


As faire-jour said - it is much more than just hearing at the speech banana. There's many sounds that are in the upper range - the quiet sounds. I wished there was a list somewhere on the web of pretty much ALL of the sounds and their max db level.

For example - someone who can hear 30db or below will not be able to hear the crickets/certain bird sounds/leaves rustling from a distance. There's a difference between hearing them right close by and at a distance. The softer sounds that are heard in the distance are in the 20 to 10 db range.

Correct me if I'm wrong. :)
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You think ill be the same when I get max gains on my HAs and im hearing low frequencies at 10db? I think id get used to hearing normally(at least for low frequency) in a couple months. My audiologist did tell me that when I first wore those Phonak Naida HAs. All kinds of new sounds I never heard before popped out at me but now im used to it and it doesn't seem strange. When I tried my 10 year old Widex Senso HAs, I couldn't believe how much I was missing.

I don't yet hear any of the odd sounds you experience and it remains to be seen what new sounds ill hear when the gains are maxed out. 42db is a fantanstic dynamic range, probably as amazing as your CI audiogram :D

Hope you can find a such list. Id also like to know their frequencies as well as DB. If you need 10-20db to hear soft sounds from a distance, this is what I hope to gain.

Anyway yesterday I replied to some other people, see above post.
 
reading this stuff confuses me to no end. all i know is my audiologist said with the testing 2 weeks after activation i was at 20db across the board and made out 70% on speech recognition.

and what the heck is speech banana????:hmm:
 
ncff07 said:
reading this stuff confuses me to no end. all i know is my audiologist said with the testing 2 weeks after activation i was at 20db across the board and made out 70% on speech recognition.

and what the heck is speech banana????:hmm:
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Find a audiogram, and you'll see that an area in sorta of a shape of a banana where ALL the speech sounds are. Someone who can hear above - mostly in the 20db and 10db in the highs are capable of hearing all sounds from speech.

However, there is a difference between hearing a speech sound from 5 feet, to 25 feet. It sounds the "same", yet, it does not have the same loudness. Someone who can hear the OOO sound probably can hear it well 5 feet away, but can't hear 25 feet away because it's too soft. People with CI can hear them better. (not all, and not just CI users, but HA users as well).
 
deafdude1 said:
You think ill be the same when I get max gains on my HAs and im hearing low frequencies at 10db? I think id get used to hearing normally(at least for low frequency) in a couple months. My audiologist did tell me that when I first wore those Phonak Naida HAs. All kinds of new sounds I never heard before popped out at me but now im used to it and it doesn't seem strange. When I tried my 10 year old Widex Senso HAs, I couldn't believe how much I was missing.

I don't yet hear any of the odd sounds you experience and it remains to be seen what new sounds ill hear when the gains are maxed out. 42db is a fantanstic dynamic range, probably as amazing as your CI audiogram :D
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Again - it is all on personal preference. I just prefer not to hear all the extra sounds on top of sounds that I WANT to hear.

Ironically, for my music program, if I use it as "everyday", I will hear all the extra sounds and stuff because it's tuned to the point where I have a much richer experience with music. I only use it in the car, listening to iPod, or maybe some video games.

The low frequencies do not bother me, because like you, I like bass sounds. it's the higher frequencies. Have you ever listen to a female opera singer singing the high octaves? How about some Mariah Carey songs? Do you ever notice that your eyes flutter/vibrate? Well, that's what it "sounds" like in my head...it's just annoying.

The one thing that I really like about my CI is that I can adjust the sensitivity on the go. Suppose one day I am overly sensitive to certain sounds (such as A.C.), so I lower my sensitivity and it does not compromise what I am listening to.
 
Thanks for your answers, everyone. I am still wondering what determines how well a person hears with CI, refer to my first post to see the questions. One of the guys I know got a CI and he insists that he will get better than 40db aided, I asked him how does he know for a fact? Can surgeons now determine from a MRI and CAT scan what aided score a person will get with CI? If not, why is he insisting he will get better than 40db when not everyone even gets to 40db?
 
deafdude1 said:
Thanks for your answers, everyone. I am still wondering what determines how well a person hears with CI, refer to my first post to see the questions. One of the guys I know got a CI and he insists that he will get better than 40db aided, I asked him how does he know for a fact? Can surgeons now determine from a MRI and CAT scan what aided score a person will get with CI? If not, why is he insisting he will get better than 40db when not everyone even gets to 40db?
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The only way a CI surgeon can predict how well a person will do with an implant is by looking at their hearing loss history. The longer one is without hearing, the more difficult progress with the CI will be. As Lady has stated before, if a person has never benefitted from hearing aids, their success with the CI will be limited or non-existent.
 
Guess what, that guy ended up hearing at 40db aided with CI. So much for insisting he will get better than that. He had a great deal of residual low frequency hearing but no high frequency hearing at all. He's still happy with his CI so I guess ill be happy for him. But his example is more proof that 40db is a normal CI result. Everyone should know this before getting CI. If your expectations are that 40db is a good result, then you are being realistic. You may get 40db, you may get better(or worse) than 40db, no one knows. If a person insists on much better than 40db, they aren't being realistic and should wait for better CI technology that can meet their high expectations.
 
deafdude1 said:
Guess what, that guy ended up hearing at 40db aided with CI. So much for insisting he will get better than that. He had a great deal of residual low frequency hearing but no high frequency hearing at all. He's still happy with his CI so I guess ill be happy for him. But his example is more proof that 40db is a normal CI result. Everyone should know this before getting CI. If your expectations are that 40db is a good result, then you are being realistic. You may get 40db, you may get better(or worse) than 40db, no one knows. If a person insists on much better than 40db, they aren't being realistic and should wait for better CI technology that can meet their high expectations.
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Someone who has NO residual hearing can still benefit from a CI. CI does not require any hair cells for it to work. It requires a good working auditory nerve to the brain, and nerve endings (this is where the array rests on). If he does not have good nerve endings at the high frequencies, then it will be lower.

I also find it a little bizarre that he cannot hear the high frequencies. I would say almost ALL CI users can hear the high frequencies. He would need a much deeper electrode placement to hear just the lows. I think he just has a bad map. Not all CI audiologist can really do very well with mappings. Some just do the "standard" thing which I find BS.

I suspect that some of these people do not have good maps, so they get 40db or worse. It's not "normal", but it's not unheard of. I just don't know WHY it is like that though. I don't go around asking all of these questions and stuff.

Again - the amount of residual hearing does not do anything with the results of a CI. You don't even need to have residual hearing. I just think it's better for those who have been exposed with sounds and have at least some comprehension of what they're hearing to have CI over those who never wore HA or any type of auditory simulation.
 
deafdude1 said:
Guess what, that guy ended up hearing at 40db aided with CI. So much for insisting he will get better than that. He had a great deal of residual low frequency hearing but no high frequency hearing at all. He's still happy with his CI so I guess ill be happy for him. But his example is more proof that 40db is a normal CI result. Everyone should know this before getting CI. If your expectations are that 40db is a good result, then you are being realistic. You may get 40db, you may get better(or worse) than 40db, no one knows. If a person insists on much better than 40db, they aren't being realistic and should wait for better CI technology that can meet their high expectations.
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Show me. You keep saying these things as if they are fact, with no back up.
 
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