Cochlear Implants

The external ear, middle ear, and inner ear, these are the three main parts of your ear that has each and every vital role in hearing. There are two types of hearing, the Conductive hearing and the Sensorineural hearing. If you have a disease causing an obstruction in the outer ear and middle ear, your conductive hearing may be impaired. This can easily be corrected by medical or surgical treatment. Sensorineural hearing is impaired when you have an inner ear problem. This is called nerve deafness because hearing cells or hair cells responsible in the generation of electric current in the auditory nerve are damaged. This kind of hearing loss can’t be treated with medicine, only a cochlear implant can.

A cochlear implant is a small electronic device specifically made for people who are extremely deaf or severely hard-of-hearing. This small yet complex device provides partial hearing or sense of sound for the deaf. Cochlear implants are surgically implanted in the inner ear with an external portion sitting behind the actual ear of a person. At first glance, others may think of it as a hearing aid, a device to make sounds louder and clearer, but it’s actually different. It works by picking up sounds from the environment, selects and arranges the sounds, converts the arranged sounds into electric impulses, and sends these electric impulses to the different regions of the auditory nerve. What the deaf person hears are some useful representation of sounds in his surroundings helping him to understand speech better.

At the advent of cochlear implants, a lot of people have undergone the surgical procedure. It has been very beneficial for children of very young age especially during the speech, language, and communication development stage where auditory stimulation is very much needed.

The benefits and results of cochlear implants vary from one person to another because of the learning process after the surgical procedure. This learning process teaches the deaf person to recognize the sound signaled to the brain by the cochlear implant. There are some people who learn fast and a few others who don’t. Other people who had had the cochlear implants and are used to lip-reading and visual hand signals find themselves needing the visual cues less and less.

The cochlear implant surgery usually takes about two to three hours and is performed by putting the patient under general anesthesia. The external parts of the cochlear implant are placed about a month after surgery. The signal processor, microphone, and implant transmitter are adjusted and placed outside the patient’s ear. The patient may be required for regular checkups and speech processor readjustments for proper monitoring.