Objective: To identify the subjetive benefits and limitations of the pre and postlingually adolescent and adult patients of the cochlear implants program at Clinical Hospital San Cecilio (Granada).
Material and methods: Cross-sectional study of 60 pre and postlingually deaf patients who received cochlear implant with more than 12 years and at least a year of experience. A open-ended questionnaire was used to value their subjetive experience. A descriptive analysis was made and we applied the square Chi and Mann-Withney tests.
Results: The average implant usage per day was greater in the postlingually patients (14.6 hours) that in the prelingually (10.4 hours). Between the acoustic benefits, both more frequent were the perception of environmental sounds and the possibility of to converse easier, specially with one or two persons. The benefit more indicated by the patients was the improvement in its mood. The perception in noise situations was the difficulty more indicated by all patients. The problems, in relation with the device, more frequently indicated were the size and the weight.
Conclusion: the cochlear implant provides subjetive benefits to the patients that complement their improvement in perception of the oral language and facilitate the re/integration of the deaf patients at his work and in his social life. Therefore, the speech perception tests must be complemented with another type of materials to value the result of the cochlear implant and then we will can to speak of success or failure.