Audiology features
Semi implantable bone conduction devices: challenges and developments
Bone conduction mechanisms and history of bone conduction aids Bone conduction hearing devices work by stimulating hair cells via the bone conduction hearing pathways. These pathways are less well understood than the air conduction pathways, but recent research has shown...
2014: Are today’s implantable devices better than conventional solutions for patients with conductive or mixed hearing loss?
Patients with conductive or mixed hearing loss become candidates for amplification when reconstructive surgery is not viable. Three common amplification options are conventional acoustic devices, such as behind-the-ear devices (BTEs), (implantable) bone-conduction devices and active middle ear implants. The goal...
Long-term outcomes of children and young people with cochlear implants
Introduction Profound childhood hearing loss has a huge impact on early communication skills, the acquisition of spoken language, and hence on educational attainments and employment prospects. Over the centuries, educators of the deaf attempted to overcome the challenge by using...
Auditory brainstem implant results in adults and children
Background The auditory brainstem implant (ABI) has been developed from cochlear implant (CI) technology and is indicated for people who have anatomical abnormalities of the cochlea or dysfunction of the auditory nerve. The majority of people who have received an...
Music and cochlear implants
Introduction The introduction of multichannel cochlear implants (CIs) in the early 1980s provided children and adults with severe and profound hearing losses with greatly improved speech perception skills. In this paper, however, I am going to focus on an area...
Access to and uptake of cochlear implants in the UK
Assessing demands on cochlear implant (CI) services is very important for both commissioners and clinicians in anticipating clinical need and funding requirements. Commercial CI’s were introduced in the late 1980s. Initial funding was from charitable sources. The first major advance...
Cochlear implant referral: how can we do better?
Considerable progress has been made over the last few years in improving access to cochlear implantation (CI) in the UK for children and adults with severe to profound deafness. But we are still not treating children early enough, and we...
What’s new in implantable devices? New indications in cochlear implantation
For over 40 years, cochlear implant procedures have steadily increased. Outcomes for patients are improving as a result of modified surgical techniques, a wider portfolio of electrode arrays, advances in programming strategies, access to improved technology and a better understanding...
