14 DAY TRIAL // Unlike hearing aids, cochlear implants are surgically mounted electronic devices, which are generally used to provide a sense of sound to people who are either deaf, or very hard of hearing, due to inherited or obtained medical conditions. The instruments function by directly stimulating the auditory nerve, rather than simply amplifying the sounds, as hearing aids do. A new, innovative type of implant was recently devised at the University of California in Irvine (UCI), which can be used to boost the children's hearing abilities, PhysOrg reports.
Originally, the first such instruments included three simple components – a receiver, an electrode system, and a magnet. Over the years, as the science advanced, and new technologies became available, the implants also got a makeover, and started employing multiple electrodes, which allow people affected by deafness or similar conditions to identify a variety of speeches. While they were at first created as an assisting tool to lipreading, the cochlear implants have now become efficient enough to be used on their own. “Now we can get people to recognize 80 to 90 percent of words, without visual cues,” the Clinical Director of the UCI Medical Center cochlear implant program, Ginger Stickney, says.
Adults could first benefit from cochlear implants in the 1980s, but it wasn't until much more recently that children could get an implant surgery for such a device. In fact, this only became possible when microprocessor construction technology resulted in very small chips. The size of the electronics was a problem, because children's skulls were naturally smaller than those of adults. The sad thing is that not many parents know that the option to implant cochlear devices in their children's ears has become widely available. At the UCI Center, 4,000 patients get treated for deafness each year, with an average of four receiving implants every month.
Speaking about a particular case at the clinic, the UCI team reveals that a young girl, who had been diagnosed with an hereditary hearing condition, was able to attend school again and be with her peers after receiving a cochlear implant. The little girl, named Ava, said that she could now understand her mother without the use of sign language, and that she was able to even make out the sound of the car's air conditioning, something she had not been able to do before.