THE NEW BTE PROCESSOR FOR ADVANCED BIONICS’ FIRST GENERATION COCHLEAR IMPLANT: THE C1 HARMONY

Brendel M (1,2), Rottmann T (1), Buechner A (1), Frohne-Buechner C (1,2) Lenarz T (1)

(1) Medical University of Hannover, Department of Otolaryngology, Hannover, Germany; (2) Advanced Bionics GmbH, Hannover, Germany.

Background: The Medical University of Hannover has more than 450 users of the first generation implant system “C1” (Clarion 1.0 and 1.2 devices from Advanced Bionics). Until now, these users have access to a bodyworn Platinum Sound Processor (PSP) and the Platinum behind-the-ear (BTE) Processor, while users of CII and HiRes90K implant systems have access to the much more advanced Harmony BTE system.

Aims: The combination of the Harmony sound processor and an appropriate software which is able to drive the C1 implants has now been made available for C1 subjects within this trial. The first acute stage of the study was to confirm the safety and efficiency of the C1 Harmony prior to commercial distribution.

Method: 23 C1 implant users participated in the acute stage. They had a mean duration of implant use of 12.5 years (9.1 to 15.3 years) with the speech coding strategies CIS, SAS or PPS. In an acute session, the clinical processor, as well as the Harmony processor, were tested using the HSM sentence test in quiet and if possible in noise. The stability of communication between implant and processor was evaluated and the subjective reports concerning speech understanding and sound quality were collected. Only minor programming changes were required to address sound quality issues.

Results: The HSM sentence test in quiet showed an equal result for the clinical processor and the Harmony processor (both 86.1%). For the HSM in noise, there was a significant improvement with the new processor (clinical processor: 17.0%, Harmony: 21.8%).

The majority of participants reported better sound quality and subjectively better speech understanding.

Conclusion: Sound quality and subjective speech perception for the C1 Harmony were comparable to the subjects’ current clinical processors. The HSM test showed significantly better results in noise with the C1 Harmony compared to their clinical processor.

E-mail: martinab@abionics.fr