Cochlear Implants
A cochlear implant is a small, complex electronic device that can help to provide a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf or severely hard-of-hearing. If you or a loved one live with hearing loss and aren’t getting enough benefit from hearing aids, a cochlear implant may help.
The implant consists of an external portion that sits behind the ear and a second portion that is surgically placed under the skin. Hearing aids make sounds louder. Cochlear implants are different; they bypass the damaged part of the ear and stimulate the hearing nerve directly. Cochlear implants could understand sentences eight times better than they could previously with their hearing aids.
It enhance the clarity of sounds and improve your ability to understand speech. It may also help you to regain confidence in social situations, re-join friends and family and live a fuller life.
A cochlear implant system has two parts:
The implant consists of an external portion that sits behind the ear and a second portion that is surgically placed under the skin.
- A microphone, which picks up sound from the environment.
- A speech processor, which selects and arranges sounds picked up by the microphone.
- A transmitter and receiver/stimulator, which receive signals from the speech processor and convert them into electric impulses.
- An electrode array, which is a group of electrodes that collects the signals from the stimulator and sends them to different regions of the auditory nerve.
An implant does not restore normal hearing. Instead, it can give a deaf person a useful representation of sounds in the environment and help him or her to understand speech
Who gets cochlear implants?
Children and adults who are deaf or severely hard-of-hearing can be fitted for cochlear implants. As of December 2019, approximately 736,900 registered devices have been implanted worldwide. In the United States, roughly 118,100 devices have been implanted in adults and 65,000 in children. (Estimates provided by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration [FDA], as reported by cochlear implant manufacturers approved for the U.S. market.)
Research has shown that when children receive a cochlear implant followed by intensive Auditory Verbal therapy before they are 18 months old, they are better able to hear, comprehend sound and music, and speak than their peers who receive implants when they are older. Some adults who have lost all or most of their hearing later in life can also benefit from cochlear implants. They learn to associate the signals from the implant with sounds they remember, including speech, without requiring any visual cues such as those provided by lip reading or sign language.