What can cause permanent profound hearing loss?
The excessive damage or absence of the hair cells in the cochlea is one reason which may lead to profound sensorineural hearing loss. This can happen as a result of illness or injury, or due to congenital reasons, i.e. hearing loss present at birth. A cochlear implant makes up for the lack of intact hair cells by placing an electrode array (with several electrode contacts) within the cochlea. This delivers sound and speech information directly to the auditory nerve by means of a small, safe electrical current.
How does a cochlear implant work?
The sound waves are picked up by a small microphone of the speech processor and turned into electrical signals (pulses). These pulses are sent to the coil and then transmitted to the implant. The implant sends a pattern of electrical pulses to the electrodes in the cochlea. The auditory nerve picks up these electrical pulses and sends them to the brain where they are recognised as sound.
Who can benefit from a cochlear implant?
Both, children and adults either born deaf or when their hearing loss occurs later in life, can benefit from cochlear implants effectively.
- Children born deaf will have the greatest benefit if they are implanted before the critical age of speech and language development which is 2-3 years old. Babies can be implanted as young as 6-8 months.
- If a person has memory of speech and language he/she can receive more benefit from a cochlear implant irrespective of age.
- The longer the period of profound deafness, the more limited the benefits are likely to be.
with a research heritage spanning over 50 years is a pioneer in worldwide cochlear implant technology. This expertise has led to the development of the latest MAESTRO Cochlear Implant System. This is designed in accordance with the highest safety and reliability standards and incorporates the latest advancements in cochlear implant technology.
- Complete cochlear coverage! Medel electrodes are the ONLY ones worldwide which cover the full cochlea maximising speech intelligibility in quiet and in noise. This has been the main reason why thousands of parents in the world have chosen Medel, so that their child not only hears and is able to go to school but can have the maximum performance, possible at school, at home and in life!
- The thinnest implant approved to date: 4mm. A key advantage, especially for children, who naturally have thinner skull than adults.
- It has 24 electrode contacts.
- Soft electrode designed for atraumatic insertion, with thickness at the end 0,5mm and 31mm long. This permits for deeper placement that gives more low frequency information containing important speech cues such as intonation, rhythm and vowel discrimination.
- The SONATA and CONCERTO thinnest titanium implants (3.3mm) are MRI safe allowing scanning without the need for extraction surgery to remove the implant.
- The Opus2 is a Behind The Ear processor that makes Body Worn processors obsolete.
- The Opus 2XS is the NEW EXTRA SMALL processor behind the ear with only 2 batteries.
- Transparent, honest and up to date. MED-EL is the only company that presents standards that exceed those of competitors http://www.medel.com/uk/show/index/id/279/title/Reliability
- The thinnest and lightest speech processor available. Weight 10g including batteries.
- Uses CIS+ speech processing strategy that provides a more complete and accurate representation of incoming sound activating the maximum number of channels at the same time for better sound resolution!
- Fully digital and capable of stimulating at 50.000 pulses per second. This high speed of transmission and the speech strategy used enable bilateral cochlear implantation for orientation, noise reduction and speech understanding in difficult situations with comfort.
- Exceptional battery life up to 1 week.
- FM system compatibility for better school performance.
- Automatic sound management (ASM). Seamless transition between listening environments without manual adjustments.
- Fine tuner control for optional manual fine adjustments with the simple touch of a button.
- Water resistant. MED-EL like other brands is water splash proof up to at least 93%. The processor has special coating to resist humidity and dust so that children can play on the beach, get splashed with water, play football and exercise while wearing their processor all the time!
Learn about what real people think of MED-EL?
TESTIMONIALS!
Euthymiades note to candidates.
Remember, that by choosing MEDEL for you or your child, you are not only choosing hearing. You are making a once in a lifetime decision to maximise your abilities forever!!
You have the chance to become like one of the thousands of MED-EL users who excel. You give your child the opportunity to have at least 30% better performance than with any other implant (Hannover 2010 * non-biased study comparing MED-EL, Cochlear, Advanced Bionics).
You are choosing the fastest and most enhanced development to reach or even exceed your peers, achieving optimum performance at school or at work and have maximum appreciation of music (Manchester, 2010 *). You maximise your ability to enjoy sounds, learn how to play musical instruments and really be part of music (Sydney, 2011 *).
MED-EL allows you to achieve speech performance in quiet and in noise not just in your language but it offers such hearing clarity that it maximizes your ability to learn other (foreign) languages by accessing an enriched and full speech spectrum of sounds.
You are aimed to excel at professional and social level. Your goal and our motto is not just HEAR LIFE! but also ENJOY LIFE! with the maximum participation! Welcome to the amazing world of hearing to the fullest,
… Your Hearing … with ! Congratulations!
* Hannover 2010, Manchester 2010, Sydney 2011 are all non biased studies comparing MED-EL, Cochlear, and Advanced Bionics.
Mother of baby implanted at 9 months – It was so hard for me to accept that my baby was born deaf. I visited so many specialists and wanted to travel abroad to hear that this was not true. That the diagnosis was a mistake! But all the doctors and audiologists I visited said the same: “Your child has profound hearing loss and the best way to help him is with a cochlear implant”. They recommended different ones, and I started an internet investigation as I wanted to choose what was best for my child. Internet gave me a headache as there was so much information out there. Different brands and different looks. I started getting in touch with other parents worldwide, I visited users locally to see their performance myself. I talked to different audiologists and specialists. My husband is an engineer and I am a teacher, so in a way it was easy for us to see in the end that MED-EL provided what we wanted. He wanted the best technology out there and I wanted my child to achieve the best educational performance. Some brands promised water resistant which was very tempting to begin with but my husband, who knows about electrical stuff, told me nothing is water proof and this is not a valid reason for us to choose. So we chose MED-EL. I wanted the fullest and richest hearing for my child, which the deep insertion electrode (31mm) uses in the full cochlea and my husband wanted the latest technology available at the time, so we chose SONATA. Since he received his 2nd implant his progress has sky-rocketed. Now, we will upgrade to the new XS processor. Our child is now 3 years old, he has normal speech, he has even exceeded his peers. We could not be happier. The teachers are very happy too and say he has a tendency in music. I think he will become a musician!