Severe droughts in Senegal are linked to increased family reunification at migration destinations in Europe.

Single-sided deafness (SSD), defined as severe-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) with poor speech recognition in one ear and normal/near-normal hearing in the contralateral ear, has an estimated prevalence of 1.5% in the US population and an annual estimated incidence of 7500 new cases. The listening handicaps caused by SSD include difficulty with speech comprehension in noise, sound localization, increased listening effort, loss of binaural cues, and decreased overall and hearing-related quality of life (QOL). Many with SSD are also affected by tinnitus. In fact, 75% of SNHL patients report tinnitus, and nearly one-third report moderate to severe levels of tinnitus. Many patients with SSD first attempt to compensate using conservative, noninvasive measures such as head positioning, selective seating, or assistive listening devices. Many individuals report avoiding challenging environments, thereby reducing social interactions and negatively impacting their QOL. In cases in which these conservative measures fail, several treatment options exist. Until recently, rehabilitative options included only devices that reroute the acoustic signal from the impaired ear to the better hearing ear (eg, contralateral routing of signal (CROS) aid and bone conduction hearing devices [BCD]). Rerouting devices show significant benefits for speech perception in noise for specific target-to-masker configurations (eg, head shadow) and can improve signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by 2.5 dB. Conversely, these devices significantly degrade speech understanding in noise in other situations by up to 3.1 dB SNR (eg, noise rerouted to the better hearing ear). As such, they prove detrimental to the squelch effect and do not reliably improve sound localization. In 2008, Van de Heyning reported on the use of a cochlear implant (CI) to treat SSD patients with incapacitating tinnitus and showed a meaningful reduction in tinnitus in 21 patients up to 2 years post-implantation. Subsequent research showed CIs not only provided substantial tinnitus reduction in patients with SSD, but also afforded meaningful improvements in speech recognition, hearing in noise, sound localization, self-perceived improvements, and QOL. In 2019, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved CIs for adults and children 5 years and older with SSD and asymmetric hearing loss, and in 2022 for adults and children 5 years and older with SSD. Since 2008, several reports have highlighted the growing interest in and research on this topic, all showing significant benefits in adults undergoing CI for SSD for both subjective and objective measures. The purpose of the current study is to assess the safety and efficacy of cochlear implantation in adult patients with SSD at 12 months postoperatively. Specifically, we evaluated objective and subjective outcomes using several test environments as well as patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs).