Question
I have heard that Advanced Bionics (AB) has released a new sound-processing strategy. Can you please tell me what differentiates it from the previous technology and what evidence there is to support upgrading my patients to the new platform?
Answer
AB’s new cochlear implant sound processing innovation is called ClearVoice™*. ClearVoice is intended to help AB recipients hear better in very difficult listening situations. It analyzes the environment and separates the sound coming into the microphone into different bands. It analyzes each band to determine whether or not the information in it is primarily a speech signal or unwanted noise. It is the first algorithm available in the market that enhances speech, improving the signal-to-noise ratio, to help recipients hear better in very challenging listening situations.
ClearVoice was available in Canada and several other countries in the world for some time before it was approved in the United States. We did a multicenter clinical study in the United States, as was required to achieve approval by the FDA. That clinical trial allowed 46 adult recipients to use ClearVoice under a stringent protocol design that was developed under the oversight of the FDA.
We pursued a superiority design, indicating that ClearVoice would yield a statistical improvement in performance for the majority of patients over their baseline strategy. And that is exactly what happened. One-hundred percent of patients showed benefit with ClearVoice and 93 percent of the recipients in the clinical study said they would use ClearVoice for their all-day, everyday program.
A study in Canada evaluated the benefit of ClearVoice in children. They saw very similar results to what we saw with our adult recipients in terms of speech perception benefit and preference. Additionally, some studies have shown that it’s actually complementary to other technologies such as FM. For more information, please visit: https://www.advancedbionics.com/ or the Advanced Bionics Expo Page on AudiologyOnline.
*Not approved for pediatric use in the United States.
