Quality of Life in Older Adults with Cochlear Implantation: Can It Be Equal to That of Healthy Older Adults?

Background and Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate the audiologic results after co-chlear implantation (CI) in older patients and the degree of improvement in their quality of life (QoL). Subjects and Methods: Patients over 65 years old who underwent CI at implant cen-ter in Bozyaka Training and Research Hospital were included in this study (n=54; 34 males and 20 females). The control group was patient over 65 years old with normal hearing (n=54; 34 males and 20 females). We administered three questionnaires [World Health Or-ganization Quality of Life-BREF (WHOQOL-BREF), World Health Organization Quality of Life-OLD (WHOQOL-OLD)], and Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) to evaluate the QoL, CI-related effects on activities of daily life, and social activities in all the subjects. Moreover, cor-relations between speech recognition and the QoL scores were evaluated. The duration of implant use and comorbidities were also examined as potential factors affecting QoL. Re-sults: The patients had remarkable improvements (the mean score of postoperative speech perception 75.7%) in speech perception after CI. The scores for the WHOQOL-OLD and WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire responses were similar in both the study and control groups, except those for a two subdomains (social relations and social participation). The patients with longer-term CI had higher scores than those with short-term CI use. In general, the chang-es in GDS scores were not significant (p<0.05). Conclusions: The treatment of hearing loss with CI conferred significant improvement in patient's QoL (p<0.01). The evaluation of QoL can provide multidimensional insights into a geriatric patient's progress and, therefore, should be considered by audiologists.