Voice Guard Processing Evaluation in a Cohort of Subjects Implanted With the Neuro Cochlear Implant System

Voice Guard and XDP are two different cochlear implant sound processing strategies. The Voice Guard sound coding strategy is adaptive in nature and can alter the output from the cochlear implant based on the levels of the listening environment. Hence, it can adapt to soft, medium or conversational and loud speech levels.The XDP on the other hand is not adaptive and cannot alter the cochlear implant output according to the levels of the listening environment. In the study we are hypothesising that the Voice Guard sound processing strategy will perform better than the XDP strategy for soft (40 dB SPL) and loud (85 dB SPL) speech input levels. Speech perception scores will be recorded at 40, 65 and 85 dB SPL and a cross over study design has been adopted. In addition, the efficacy of a cochlear implant sound reduction technique called Voice Track will also be evaluated. The Voice Track is designed to reduce the adverse effect of background noise on cochlear implant speech perception.