ABSTRACT
In 1990, two deaf children aged 5 years received cochlear implants. 1 These were the first such operations in the Netherlands on young children. Prior to that, a number of cochlear implant operations had been carried out, but exclusively on adolescents and adults. The two children involved had become deaf at the age of 2;9 as a result of meningitis. The implantation was carried out 2 years and 3 months later. Before the operation, both children had a hearing loss greater than a PTA of 140 dB SPL in the better ear; after activation of the speech processor this loss was reduced to a PTA of approximately 50 dB SPL. 2 It is to be expected that the increase in access to auditory information will have a positive effect on the development of the children’s spoken language.
