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When the auditory nerve endings deteriorate or never develop, Cochlear Implants are an excellent solution for severe and profound deafness. The implant bypasses the inner ear nerve endings and stimulates the auditory nerves directly.
Two principal implant systems are available in the United States, and Pittsburgh Ear Associates’ surgeons implant both the Nucleus Cochlear Implant Systems and the Advanced Bionic Clarion Systems.
In addition to tremendous technical advances in implantation hardware and programming, there are two significant advances that directly affect patient selection. First, we now are certain that patients with severe hearing loss who achieve less than 40% speech understanding actually hear much better with a cochlear implant than with their hearing aids. Because of this, patients with severe hearing loss who perform poorly with hearing aids should consider a cochlear implant.
The second advance is that congenitally deaf children can develop nearly normal speech and language skills and attend regular schools if they are implanted early (as close to one year of age as possible).
Cochlear implants are an outstanding solution for hearing loss in patients with severe or profound hearing loss .
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