Telephone use and the factors influencing it among cochlear implant patients

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate telephone use in cochlear implant patients and to determine factors most likely to influence telephone use. METHODS: Surveys were mailed to 504 cochlear implant patients treated at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Hospital. RESULTS: Two hundred four patients returned surveys (49%), 87% were classified as telephone users. No differences were found in age, pre-implant hearing characteristics, and the majority of post-implant behaviors. Education and post-implant sound perception scores were found to be significantly different (P < 0.05) between telephone users and non-users. DISCUSSION: Telephone use among cochlear implant patients shows a positive increase compared to previous studies. In addition, we find that higher attained education and post-implant hearing scores to be independently correlated to telephone use.