Background:
Rehabilitation centres for cochlear implant (CI) recipients act as gateways for increasing auditory perception and developing speech and language. In the case of children, such centres must strive not only to get the best outcomes in terms of hearing and speech, but they must also provide satisfaction to both CI recipients and their parents. To gauge the quality of service, we have divided the range of services offered into four areas and have assessed the specific and overall satisfaction levels of parents of CI children towards these services.

Material and Methods:
This was a prospective, randomized, cross-sectional study based on a questionnaire provided to CI users of rehabilitation centers in Tamil Nadu, India. The parents of 100 CI recipients younger than 6 years were asked to fill in a questionnaire using a 5-point rating scale. The education level of the care-taker and the time spent with the child at home were also ascertained, and these factors were correlated with CI performance outcomes (categories of auditory performance, CAP, and speech intelligibility rating, SIR).

Results:
The overall satisfaction level of the parents was reasonably high (mean=3.9, SD=0.44). There was a positive correlation of satisfaction score with rehabilitation outcomes (r=0.80 for CAP; 0.29 for SIR). The level of education of the parents had no correlation with the outcome either for CAP (r=0.15) or SIR (r=0.07). Time spent by the parents with the CI recipient at home gave r-values of 0.31 for CAP and 0.39 for SIR.

Conclusions:
The general level of satisfaction of parents towards the services provided by the rehabilitation centres was good. In terms of best CI outcome, the time spent by the parents with their child was more important than the parents’ education level.