Background and Aim: Vestibular evoked myogenic potential in response to click or short tone burst stimuli have been used as a clinical test for distinguish saccule and inferior vestibular nerve diseases. Different studies show that cochlear implant could have inverse effects on vestibular structures. We aimed to investigate vestibular evoked myogenic potential in unilateral cochlear implanted individuals in compare to normal individuals.
Methods: Thirty-three unilateral cochlear implanted patients (mean age 19.96 years) and 30 normal hearing individuals (mean age 24-27 years) as control group were enrolled in this cross- sectional study. Absolute latencies and amplitudes of myogenic potential responses were measured and compared in both groups.
Results: Myogenic potential recorded in both ears of all controls were normal. No response could be recorded in 16 patients (48.48%) from both ears. In three patients, responses were recorded in both ears though the amplitude of waves was reduced in implanted ear. Unilateral response could be recorded in 14 patients only in their non-implanted ear.
Conclusion: Vestibular evoked myogenic potential test is a useful tool for assessing saccular function in cochlear implant patients. Damages of osseous spiral lamina and basilar membrane after cochlear implantation could result in dysfunctions of vestibular organs specially saccule. It seems that saccule could be easily damaged after cochlear implantation. This would cause absence or reduced amplitudes in myogenic potential.

Background and Aim: Due to defects of auditory feedback, children with hearing loss have inappropriate speech intonation. Consistently, results of previous studies have shown that cochlear-implanted children have some difficulties in their intonation. Intonation shows the type of the sentence which can be statement or question sentences. The purpose of this study was comparison of speech intonation in cochlear-implanted children and normal hearing children.
Methods: The present study was performed on 25 cochlear-implanted children and 50 normal hearing children. Different pictures were shown to the subjects and they said statement and question sentences. All sentences were heard by eight speech therapists and perceptually judged. Using praat software mean base frequency and pitch alterations were measured.
Results: In cochlear-implanted group, mean speech base frequency was higher and mean pitch alteration was lower than the control group. Mean experts&apos scores in cochlear-implanted group were lower than the control group. Differences in all three variables were statistically significant (p<0.05). There was a significant direct correlation between duration of time that the children had cochlear implant and perceptual judgment scores (p<0.05).
Conclusion: According to the results, cochlear implant prosthesis has limited efficacy in improving speech intonation although their ability to produce speech intonation improves by increasing duration of the time that children have cochlear implant. Thus speech therapists should consider intervening on speech intonation in treatment program of cochlear-implanted children.

Background and Aim: Early diagnosis of hearing loss lead to early intervention and improvement of developmental skills of children with hearing loss. The present study aimed to determine the mean age of hearing loss diagnosis and cochlear implantation (CI) in hearing impaired children and to compare the age of performing cochlear implantation in children who were identified by newborn hearing screening with those who were not.
Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 96 children with severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss who received cochlear implantation in Amir-e-Alam cochlear implantation center between the years 2008 and 2010. For data gathering, we assessed subjects&apos medical archives, interviewed with their parents and took medical history including demographic information, birth history and hearing loss history.
Results: Mean age of hearing loss suspicion, diagnosis, hearing aids administration, Initiation of rehabilitation program, performing cochlear implantation and mean age when cochlear implantation was utilized were 6.73 (SD=5.79), 9.35 (SD=5.79), 13.41 (SD=6.10), 16 (SD=6.36), 41.25 (SD=11.12), and 42.15 (SD=11.00) months, respectively. There was statistically significant difference between them (p<0.05). 43.8% of hearing impaired children had been identified by newborn hearing screening. There was statistically significant difference between cochlear implantation operation age of children who were identified by newborn hearing screening with those who were not (p<0.0001).
Conclusion: In spite of notable reduction in the age of hearing loss diagnosis and intervention during recent years, compared to international indices it is still tardy. Conducting newborn hearing screening can significantly reduce these ages.