Cochlear Diseases clinical trials

Remote Monitoring Applied to Cochlear Implant Patient Follow-up

The cochlear implant (CI) is a device to compensate severe or profound deafness. The CI has a lifetime implanted part and an external processor. Regular monitoring is necessary because the device can generate complications and when the device is dysfunctional, the patient becomes deaf again. Our center, the CRIC, is a center for monitoring and fitting CI. Follow-up requires face-to-face procedures and some patients have difficulty accessing the center. Our cohort of patients is growing steadily and now exceeds 750 patients. Provision should be made for sustained steady growth and enabling means. Telemedicine may be a response for the follow-up of some patients. Currently, cochlear implanted patients benefit once a year from: an ENT (Ear Nose and Throat) medical consultation, a speech-language assessment, physical verification of the external processor, an audiometric test, a fitting of the external processor. This makes it possible to check the absence of medical complication, the use and the correct functioning of the external and internal parts. Provision should be made for sustained steady growth and enabling means. With the development of new hearing tests, technical possibilities of some speech processors and software for their fitting, telemedicine may be a response for the follow-up of some patients. TELESURVIC will study the feasibility for patients implanted with an implant Cochlear™ to carry out a complete test of their equipment by themselves. For this project we will use a tablet device, without simultaneous contact with CRIC professionals. On this tablet are installed calibrated hearing tests, tutorials of good maintenance of the processor and a software of adjustment allowing the realization of the operations desired for an inspection of the implant. Patients selected to participate, (on a voluntary basis), in this protocol will follow the following steps: 1. They will first be trained in the use of the tablet at the CRIC by professionals. Patients will only be included if they are autonomous in handling the tablet and specific software; 2. They will carry out the various tests at the hospital on the tablet: audiometry test in quiet and in noise then checking of the data logging, self-fitting thanks to the Cochlear software (NFS); 3. Between one week and one month later, they will come back to the center and will do the same tests alone in a quiet room of the center. 4. Outside the patient's presence, the data will be analyzed and compared with the data collected in step 2, in order to validate or not, the feasibility of these self-administrated tests without any help by the team.