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Thomas J. Balkany, Denver, recently described a deaf patient who had undergone bilateral cochlear implantation. His report, presented at the Western Section meeting of the Triological Society, Coronado, Calif, described a 43-year-old woman, deafened by treatment with streptomycin, who initially received an implant with a House/3M single-channel device and 1 ½ years later had a Nucleus 22 channel system placed in the opposite ear. A comparison of audiologic test results between the two ears revealed superior performance for the multichannel device. For example, on open-set Central Institute for the Deaf sentence material, the patient scored 5% with the singlechannel implant and 50% with the multichannel system. Lip-reading skills were also enhanced to a much greater degree with multichannel stimulation.
Another finding of considerable interest was that binaural stimulation using both devices provided slightly better auditory rehabilitation than with multichannel stimulation alone. Furthermore, this advantage increased with time, presumably as sensory