PhD Conferral Mrs. Joke Debruyne, MSc.

"Cochlear implantation in adults with early-onset deafness"

A cochlear implant of CI can be placed in deaf and seriously ill-affected patients who have insufficient benefit from hearing aids. Patients who have become deaf from birth at a very young age, and who only receive a CI in adulthood, form a specific group within CI users. They also get less good results in the field of speech understanding than patients who only became deaf at a later age. This dissertation produces more knowledge about how certain parameters of the CI setting are processed by early-deaf patients. Furthermore, it shows that a CI leads to a positive result in this group of patients, but that adapted test material, and attention to the subjectively experienced benefits, is important in determining what a CI means for this group of patients.