More than a quarter century of cochlear implantations: a retrospective study on 1161 implantations at the Antwerp University Hospital
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objective: In this study, we aimed to describe the demographic profile of all 1161 implantations performed in the last 27 years, including sex, (evolution of) age at implantation, side of implantation, and rate of reimbursed cases; to identify the differences between the adult and the pediatric cochlear implant (CI) population; to describe the etiology of hearing loss in the adult and pediatric CI population; and to investigate the number and causes of the re-implantations. Methods: We performed a retrospective demographic analysis of all 1161 cochlear implantations performed at the Antwerp University Hospital between August 1993 and November 2020. Results: The vast majority of the adult population presented with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss (89%) of an unknown etiology (52%) and was unilaterally implanted at a median age of 60 years. In the pediatric population with congenital profound hearing loss, the median age at first implantation decreased significantly over time. During the past five years, the median age at first implantation was 12 months or younger for children with congenital hearing loss. A genetic cause was the most common etiology in children with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss (53%). Of all implantations, 4% were re-implantations. Re-implantations were performed on average ten years after the first implantation, and the most common reason for re-implantation was implant failure (76%). Conclusion: This study described the profile of 1161 adult and pediatric implantations between the start in 1993 and 2020 that were performed at the Antwerp University Hospital in parallel with the evolution of the Belgian reimbursement criteria. Cite this article as: Mertens G, Hofkens–Van den Brandt A, Boudewyns A, et al. More than a quarter century of cochlear implantations: a retrospective study on 1161 implantations at the Antwerp University Hospital. B-ENT 2021; 17(3): 155-63.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".