Cochlear implant (CI) patients require regular follow-up care over multiple visits to achieve optimal hearing outcomes. In clinical routine, however, visits rarely occur on the exact scheduled dates and cluster around them, reducing reproducibility and comparability of CI analyses....
No actionable change for clinicians — this is a methodological tool for researchers analysing cochlear implant outcome data, with no direct clinical guidance.
Improving the statistical handling of irregular follow-up data in cochlear implant research could reduce bias in reported hearing outcome trajectories and lead to more reliable evidence for clinical guidelines.
- 01Introduces a data-driven 'visit windowing' algorithm to handle irregular CI follow-up timing.
- 02Addresses a common real-world problem: patients rarely return at precisely scheduled intervals.
- 03Method is applied to cochlear implant outcome data to improve trajectory analysis.
- 04Primarily a methodological/informatics contribution rather than a clinical finding.
- 05Could improve reproducibility and comparability across CI outcome studies if adopted.
A data-driven visit windowing approach improves the analysis of hearing outcome trajectories in cochlear implant follow-up data compared to conventional fixed-window methods.
studyunclear- PMID
- 42174816
- DOI
- 10.3233/SHTI260139.
- Journal
- Studies in Health Technology and Informatics
- Publication type
- research_article
- Evidence level
- na
- Population
- Cochlear implant patients with irregular clinical follow-up data
- Intervention
- Data-driven visit windowing methodology
- Comparator
- Conventional fixed visit-windowing approaches
Primary outcomes
Accuracy of hearing outcome trajectory analysis; Handling of irregular follow-up timing in CI data