How high did the ABR test to? 90db HL maximum? He may have only 70db or even 50db loss at 250Hz. That would make a very big difference. I know a woman who has no hearing around 750Hz and above but her low frequency hearing is extremely good(10db at 250Hz and below, 50db at 500Hz) and she understands too much speech to qualify for CI. 60% of the speech information takes place at 500Hz and below. This is why I understand some speech with my audiogram.
Taking it slow is fine as long as you reach the goal of as much amplification as he can tolerate up to the maximum. Id watch the SPL/MPO rather than too much gain. Will his new audiogram be both unaided and aided?
And does he still hear better in the right ear? His left ear may be dead or nearly dead. If you ever decide on CI, the left ear is the one to be implanted, not much residual hearing left to lose.
Doesn't the psychoacoustic tuning curve(PTC) test give an objective measure? I know the TEN test is subjective but works on adults and older children.
If he can learn to speak clearly and understand 80% with reading lips and has no problem communicating with others, would he still need a CI?
Does it matter if one obtains speech by using their ears(listening) or using their eyes(lipreading) the information processed by the brain is the same. Both are vechles to input speech data to the brain. Both allow easy access to communication. Lipreading does have some limitations but we, the deaf are perfectly capable anyway! What are you expecting as an improvement over CI that the deaf aren't capable of? We are no worse than hearing people! Stem cells won't make me better, itll simply improve my hearing and allow my HAs to give me more access to sounds, consider it a convinence.
That's because the deaf are just as capable as hearing people. The only difference is we lack the ability to hear which we easily make up elsewhere.
So why not wait for him to decide if he wants CI, stem cells, HAs or nothing? If you teach him how to speak clearly and read lips, it won't be "too late" to understand speech and speak. There are people born deaf who didn't hear much with HAs who got CI at 40 and understand speech as good as postlinguals with CI.
Do you plan to raise him orally or sign only? My parents raised my orally only and I even chose not to learn sign language as I wanted to focus on speech as much as possible while I was young. None of my hearing friends know sign and most deaf people can read lips just fine. I won't wait 20 years for stem cells, try 5 years maximum then ill get stem cells at whatever stage of development they happen to be at. He may be old enough as a teen to decide not to wait anymore and get stem cells.
