To identify the incidence of and common causes for cochlear implant (CI) revision, operative records were reviewed for all CI cases from 1991 to 2008. The causes were classified as hard device failure, soft device failure, CI exposure/infection, CI/ electrode migration. Four hundred and fifty CI surgeries were performed during the study period including 23 (5.4%) revision procedures. The revision rate was 7.8% for children and 4.2% for adults but did not reached statistical significant difference. While the mean interval to revision surgery was 37.6 months for children and 93.8 months for adults and reached statistical significant difference (P=0.003). The most common causes were device failures (74%; 44% hard failure, 30% soft failure) followed by CI exposure/ infection (22%), and CI/electrode migration (4%). While the need for revision CI surgery is uncommon, its incidence appears to be higher in children than in adults and the interval to revision surgery is shorter in children than in adults. There exists the potential for improvement in speech perception and both children and adults benefit from revision CI surgery.
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