About the Authors

Diane S. Lazard

dianelazard@yahoo.fr

Affiliation Bionics Institute, Melbourne, Australia

Christophe Vincent

Affiliation Service d'otologie et d'otoneurologie, Hôpital R.-Salengro, CHRU de Lille, Lille, France

Frédéric Venail

Affiliation CHU Gui de Chauliac, Service d'ORL et Chirurgie Cervico-Faciale, Montpellier, France

Paul Van de Heyning

Affiliation Department of Otorhinolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery, Antwerp University Hospital, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium

Eric Truy

Affiliation Hospices Civils de Lyon, Hôpital Edouard Herriot, Département d'ORL, de Chirurgie Cervico-Maxillo-Faciale et d'Audiophonologie, Lyon, France

Olivier Sterkers

Affiliation AP-HP, Hôpital Beaujon, Service d'ORL et Chirurgie Cervico-Faciale, Clichy, France

Piotr H. Skarzynski

Affiliations Institute of Physiology and Pathology of Hearing, Warsaw, Poland, Institute of Sensory Organs, Kajetany, Poland

Henryk Skarzynski

Affiliation Institute of Physiology and Pathology of Hearing, Warsaw, Poland

Karen Schauwers

Affiliation The Eargroup, Antwerp, Belgium

Stephen O'Leary

Affiliation Department of Otolaryngology, The University of Melbourne Cochlear Implant Clinic, The Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital, Melbourne, Australia

Deborah Mawman

Affiliation University of Manchester, Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester, United Kingdom

Bert Maat

Affiliation University of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen, Department of Otorhinolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, Cochlear Implant Center Northern Netherlands, Groningen, The Netherlands

Andrea Kleine-Punte

Affiliation Department of Otorhinolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery, Antwerp University Hospital, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium

Alexander M. Huber

Affiliation Department of Otorhinolaryngology, University Hospital of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Kevin Green

Affiliation University of Manchester, Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester, United Kingdom

Paul J. Govaerts

Affiliation The Eargroup, Antwerp, Belgium

Bernard Fraysse

Affiliation Hôpital Universitaire Purpan, Service d'ORL et Chirurgie Cervico-Faciale, Toulouse, France

Richard Dowell

Affiliation Department of Otolaryngology, The University of Melbourne Cochlear Implant Clinic, The Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital, Melbourne, Australia

Norbert Dillier

Affiliation Department of Otorhinolaryngology, University Hospital of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Elaine Burke

Affiliation St Thomas' Hospital, Auditory Implants Department, London, United Kingdom

Andy Beynon

Affiliation Otorhinolaryngology, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center, Mijmegen, The Netherlands

François Bergeron

Affiliation Faculté de médecine, Université Laval, Québec City, Québec, Canada

Deniz Başkent

Affiliations University of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen, Department of Otorhinolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, Cochlear Implant Center Northern Netherlands, Groningen, The Netherlands, Graduate School of Medical Sciences (Research School of Behavioural and Cognitive Neurosciences), University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

Françoise Artières

Affiliations CHU Gui de Chauliac, Service d'ORL et Chirurgie Cervico-Faciale, Montpellier, France, Institut Saint Pierre, Service d'Audiophonologie et ORL, Palavas les flots, France

Peter J. Blamey

Affiliations Bionics Institute, Melbourne, Australia, Department of Otolaryngology, The University of Melbourne Cochlear Implant Clinic, The Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital, Melbourne, Australia

Competing Interests

Most of the authors of this paper are involved in the purchase and application of cochlear implants from one or more of the four largest manufacturers (Advanced Bionics, Cochlear Limited, Med-El, and Neurelec). Peter Blamey is a co-inventor of technologies used in the device manufactured by Cochlear Limited and formerly received a share of royalties from the University of Melbourne. He is not a shareholder in Cochlear and no longer receives royalties. The hearing aid company, Blamey & Saunders Hearing Pty Ltd, regularly refers people with severe-to-profound hearing loss to cochlear implant clinics whenever it seems likely that a CI will provide a better clinical outcome than a HA. The Bionics Institute has a small shareholding in Cochlear Limited. DL received travel support from Cochlear in 2010/11. Neurelec partially funded her PhD work in 2009/10, but was not involved in the research project (fMRI). This dataset is a very rare resource enabling comparison of different devices from different manufacturers and from different cochlear implant clinics and the data analysts (Blamey and Lazard) designed the study and analysis in a way that treats data for these different devices equivalently to avoid any possibility of bias. Statistically significant differences between the device brands were found in the analysis, and the device brands have been de-identified in the manuscript to avoid use of the data for commercial advantage. This has been a difficult decision because de-identification of the brands is also withholding important information about clinical outcomes from potential patients and clinicians. The authors agree to share the (de-identified) data on request for academic, non-commercial purposes if the paper is published.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: DL CV FV PVdH ET OS PHS HS KS SO DM BM AKP AMH KG PJG BF RD ND EB AB FB DB FA PJB. Analyzed the data: DL PJB. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: DL PJB. Wrote the paper: DL PJB. Critically revised the manuscript: DL CV FV PVdH ET OS PHS HS KS SO DM BM AKP AMH KG PJG BF RD ND EB AB FB DB FA PJB.