Impact of Auditory Verbal Therapy in Children with Cochlear Implant

Auditory Verbal Therapy (AVT) is considered as most successful therapeutic approach for cochlear implant children. The impact of auditory verbal therapy has been studied vividly in Indian context. The number of cochlear implantees receiving AVT has been increased nationwide but there is no structured protocol that is used to assess the efficacy of AVT on children with cochlear implant. Hence, it is important to develop a structured protocol consisting of established tools to study the effectiveness of AVT. Materials and Methods The study was conducted on 62 (male-38, female-24) bilaterally profound sensorineural hearing impaired children with cochlear implant done under ADIP (Assistance to Disabled Persons for Purchase/ Fitting of Aids and Appliances) scheme. Pre-therapy assessments were done before 2 weeks of cochlear implantation using Functional Auditory Performance Indicator (FAPI), Assessment of language development, Speech intelligibility rating scales, Brown’s (1973) stages of mean length of utterance (MLU) assessment, and Overall rating of parental satisfaction on a visual analog scale of 0 to 10. Auditory verbal therapy (AVT) was given for 6-8 months, twice per week under video-monitoring of the sessions. Post therapeutic scores were obtained by assessing with the same tools through observation and interaction with the children and interviewing the caregivers. Results Independent Sample’s T-test in SPSS -16 software were used and significant differences between pre and post therapy scores were obtained (p<0.005). Conclusion These tools can be used further as a protocol for assessment of baseline skills before AVT, then develop an individualized management program and finally to assess the improvement after AVT.