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Quality of Life Measures Provided by the Glasgow Benefit Inventory among Cochlear Implant Users: Is this Quality of Evidence Adequate to Assess Outcomes?

Raghu Nandhan Sampath Kumar and Mohan Kameswaran

The quality of evidence presently available for assessing the Quality of life (QoL) outcomes in Cochlear implant (CI) users, is not of high level and is variable between cohorts and across centres of the world. There are many generic hearing-related quality of life measures available for assessment of the outcomes with the Glasgow benefit inventory (GBI) being the most popular, but these do not address in particular the diverse cultural, ethnic, cognitive, behavioural and socio-economic spectrum among the implantees. Since such confounders may influence the scoring system of these validated QoL tools, it is imperative to systematically analyze the existent literature to understand the quality of evidence available currently, how they may be upgraded or downgraded and to decipher the positives and negatives of the common GBI scoring system, to conclude upon the final level of evidence. Future directions for developing a systematic and universal guideline to asses QoL outcomes among cochlear implantees, can be inferred from such a critical appraisal.