Multicenter Study of Outcomes of Pediatric Cochlear Implantation in Gulf Cooperation Council Countries

Aims: The aim of the study was to describe outcomes among children with cochlear implants in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Materials and Methods: Retrospective cross-sectional data from 180 children with early cochlear implantation available from six hospitals in four GCC countries were allocated to two cohort groups: children with hearing loss (HL) without additional difficulties (HL-AD) and children with HL with additional difficulties (HL + AD). The Integrated Scales of Development scored outcomes within age groups from 0–3 months to 43–48 months, according to developmental milestones, across six domains: listening, receptive language, expressive language, speech, cognition, and social communication. Results: The mean age of diagnosis was 6 months; mean age at switch-on, 23 months. Most children had unknown causes of HL; 23% ( n = 41) had genetic etiology; 8.3% ( n = 15) presented with various syndromes. Notably, 63% ( n = 96) of the children were from consanguineous marriages. Average audition, receptive/expressive language, and speech age-level scores varied between 3.3 and 4.8 months; communication, 10.9–12.5 months; cognition levels, 13.6–16.5 months. Scores differed significantly between cohorts (HL-AD vs. HL + AD) in audition ( P = 0.044), cognition ( P = 0.0418), and communication ( P = 0.003), but not in receptive ( P = 0.807) and expressive ( P = 0.795) language and speech ( P = 0.646). Conclusion: Although our study countries practice newborn hearing screening, intervention lags behind early hearing detection and intervention Program standards. We predict 88% of our study population will score around 1.4 standard deviation decrease in language outcomes compared to expected results from ideal implantation before age 12 months. We highly recommend ongoing monitoring to optimize language development in our cohort and reduce the language gap corresponding to delayed implantation.