Introduction:

the learning of the mother tongue constitutes for many the greatest intellectual feat that man can perform. Oral language is mainly based on acoustic information. In patients with severe or profound bilateral sensorineural hearing loss, the cochlear implant is one of the answers to receive and process auditory afferents.

Objective:

to characterize the behavior of the speech-language rehabilitation of patients with cochlear implant in Pinar del Río, province attended Pepe Portilla Pediatric Hospital, in the period 2005-2021.

Methods:

an observational, descriptive, longitudinal and retrospective study was carried out, taking data from the speech-language clinical history, which data were processed by means of the statistical system InfStat 1.0. The target group and the sample consisted of 40 patients who met the inclusion criteria.

Results:

in the sample, the cumulative frequency indicates that 65 % of the patients were implanted before the 8 years old; 7 of the patients who were implanted before 3 years old, are at the recognition-comprehension level; in patients with an early implant, as hearing age advances, the level of speech-language rehabilitation increases and auditory-verbal therapy is used as a rehabilitation modality. The frequency of attendance of patients to therapy in the provincial center varies.

Conclusions:

early diagnosis of severe or profound bilateral sensorineural hearing loss, timely cochlear implantation and the combined work of parents and rehabilitators are essential for the successful development of the patient's language skills.

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