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Hearing aid could help millions
PITTSBURGH -- People with hearing loss caused by aging or exposure to loud noises have long thought that hearing aids or other partly external devices were their only choice.
But Doctors at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh and Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle are studying a completely implantable hearing-restoration system that could help people with the most common form of hearing loss.
A 66-year-old Pittsburgh man became the first person in the United States to receive the Envoy Middle ear Implantable System. Three other patients -- a 73-year-old man from Wabash, a 58-year0old woman from Greensburg and a 63-year-old man from Johnstown -- later received the implant.
But doctors do not know yet how well the implant works said Dr. Moisés Arriaga, a co-director at Allegheny General's Hearing and Balance Center.
Patients who are a part of the first phase of the study will have to wait up to eight weeks while they heal from the surgery before the implant can be activated, he said.
"That's the whole point of the study. We just don't know how well it works," Arriaga said.
Minneapolis- based St. Croix Medical Inc., which developed the implant, is funding the study. Researchers in Germany have studied the device for the past year, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently cleared the implant for study in the United States, Arriaga said.
The device could improve the hearing of those people who suffer from mild to severe sensorineural hearing loss, or about 10 million people in the country, Arriaga said.
About on in four adults over the age of 60 suffer from some form of hearing loss, said Dr. Laurie Hanin of the New York-based League for the Hard of Hearing. Most of those people can be treated with a conventional hearing aid.
Associated Press - Allison Schlesinger - March 19, 2002
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