Basic fitting and evaluation parameters of a newly designed cochlear implant electrode.

OBJECTIVE To validate a newly designed cochlear implant electrode (TRACE) in the standard monopolar mode and compare it to a patient group implanted with a standard Nucleus Contour cochlear implant electrode. The electrode contacts of the TRACE electrode have the same active surface area for stimulation, but the position in the scala tympani is different from that of the Nucleus Contour electrode. MATERIAL AND METHODS The following parameters, used in cochlear implant fitting and evaluation procedures, were determined: the threshold and comfort stimulation current levels; the electrode impedances; and the phoneme discrimination and speech recognition scores using the ACE speech algorithm. CONCLUSION The new electrode does not differ significantly from the standard Nucleus Contour electrode in terms of the investigated parameters within the test group.