Cochlear Implant: Treatment for Hearing Loss

A silent world is the life for someone with profound hearing loss. This happens when the cochlear nerve or the auditory nerve experience severe damage. In this case, the tiny hair cells in the cochlea nerve are no longer viable and cannot send electrical impulses to the brain to be translated. This damage can occur at any time, whether before birth or long after and results in profound deafness for that individual.

There is hope however; the use of a cochlear implant may be the answer. With the use of this device, people who are deaf may actually be able to hear sounds they have long since lost or hear sounds they have never heard.

The cochlear implant device also has an external component which is worn around the ear much like a BTE aid or behind the ear hearing aid. It then takes over the function of the damaged inner ear structures by using vibrations to send signals to the brain to be interpreted into sound.

How it Works.

The cochlear implant is made up of both internal and external components. The external component consists of:

- Battery – microphone – micro-computer that processes sound – a radio-frequency antenna that transmits sound

The job of the micro-computer is to convert sounds into signals which are then sent to the internal parts for receiving. The internal part that is implanted is also referred to as a receiver/stimulator. It is made up of a micro-computer, magnet, radio antenna and electrode array. The radio antennas allow communication between both the external and internal components while the magnets (each of opposite polarity) hold the external part over the internal part.

Environmental sounds are picked up by the microphone and sent to the speech processor or micro-computer to be processed into signals which are then transmitted by the antenna to the undamaged area of the cochlear fibers. There, the signals are sent to the electrodes which in turn send them to the brain to be translated into sound.

The cochlear implant does not restore hearing as we know it. What it actually does is translate sound into a signal that is sent to the brain. The brain translates this signal into information that can be recognized as sound coming from the environment.

Age is significant in being able to translate the sound produced. Young children apparently have no problem doing this. The older a person is the more difficulty there is in performing the translation. Concentrated training is required, performed by a professional who is skilled in administering this type of training.