These statements will, on an international level, go to creating clinical practice guidelines that will then lead to the standard of care concept that this is, when someone has this level of hearing loss, and this level of difficulty with understanding speech that the cochlear implant is the obvious choice for that person.

I think for an audiologist who’s working with a population of adults with hearing loss, that they’ve been fitting hearing aids and managing their hearing aid care, they recognise when they’ve reached the limits of what they can do. And even before they reach that point, I would hope that people would think about a cochlear implant for an adult.

Associate Professor Holly Teagle, Clinical Director of Audiology and Therapy at The Hearing House in Auckland, New Zealand.