Clinical Trials

Existing research, as discussed, supports the opinion that current candidacy criteria are set conservatively. The Sponsor, in addition to the support of recent peer reviewed literature illustrating a need for an appropriate criteria and more suitable speech recognition measure, believe it is appropriate at this time to re-evaluate the candidacy requirements associated with adult cochlear implantation. Specifically, this will be accomplished by evaluating the safety and efficacy of the Cochlear™ Nucleus® cochlear implant system under revised cochlear implant indications. The proposed approach would be to evaluate individuals scoring between 10 - 40% inclusively on monosyllabic words (CNC) who do not meet current approved speech perception criteria with the widely used sentence measure HINT in quiet. No change to current qualifying audiometric criteria (bilateral moderate to profound sensorineural hearing loss in the low frequencies and profound hearing loss in the mid to high speech frequencies) for implant candidacy is proposed.