Conventional CI fitting procedures depend on the subjective feedback of the CI user. However, this approach is difficult to use in CI users who are not able to give adequate behavioral feedback, particularly in young children and infants. An objective method to determine the electrical stimulation parameters could be a solution to be certain the child has proper access to sound after the fitting session. New advances show that electrically evoked auditory steady-state responses (eASSRs) measured with electroencephalography (EEG) have great potential as an objective fitting method for CIs, especially for clinically relevant stimulation parameters, i.e., high pulse rates and a monopolar stimulation configuration. Recent research in our lab shows that this approach is successful in adults with a CI, despite the high stimulation artifacts that corrupt the EEG. However, measuring these responses in children with a CI is challenging. A successful artifact removal method, i.e., linear interpolation, enables the measurement of artifact-free responses with clinical CI parameters in adult CI users, with the majority of eASSR thresholds within the lowest quartile of the dynamic range. The threshold determination based on the eASSRs has not been established for the pediatric CI population due to lack of appropriate artifact removal methods in children with a CI and several other factors that complicate data collection and analyses, e.g., responses could be smaller in children, artifact topography might be different, their head is smaller than an adult head, … The purpose of this study is to conduct a feasibility study and compare several artifact removal methods. Therefore, we measure eASSRs, at 900 pulses per second (pps) and a monopolar configuration, in children with single-sided deafness who received a CI. The results of this exploration will be presented at the conference.

Feasibility of Measuring Auditory Steady-State Responses in Children with a Cochlear Implant

It is with great pleasure and enthusiasm, that on behalf of the Cochlear Implant centers of the Radboud UMC in Nijmegen and Erasmus MC Sophia Children’s Hospital in Rotterdam to invite you to attend the 16th European Symposium on Pediatric Cochlear Implantation to Rotterdam, the Netherlands in 2023.

Yours sincerely, on behalf of the CI Centers at Radboud UMC and Erasmus MC,