Helping the Deaf Hear
Reported August 2007
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Hearing with your bones? It may seem like the stuff of science fiction, but a new device is allowing some partially deaf patients to do just that.
A childhood case of chicken pox scarred Lara Lockwood's right eardrum, leaving her permanently deaf in that ear. Since traditional hearing aids don't work for patients with single sided deafness, Lara lived with her condition.
"People always wondered like, 'Why is she turning her head? She's not looking at the movie, she's not looking at the speaker.' It's really that I was wanting to hear what the other person beside me was saying," Lockwood said.
But now, Lara is "hearing" in both ears thanks to a new hearing aid implanted by her otolaryngologist. It works with a transmitter worn behind the ear that sends sound vibrations from her deaf side through the skull to her good ear. It's called the BAHA.
"The device is implanted in the skull through the scalp behind the ear and causes a vibration when sound enters the field which vibrates the entire skull," said John May, M.D., otolaryngologist at Wake Forest University in Winston Salem, North Carolina.
Those vibrations travel to the cochlea in the healthy ear where they are perceived as sound. And because the BAHA doesn't go inside the ear, it is also a welcome alternative for patients who can't tolerate traditional hearing aids.
"This sort of bypasses the ear canal and ear drum to get sound directly to the cochlea," Dr. May explained.
For Lara, the BAHA has brought back a sensation she's missed for more than thirty years.
"You know, you go through a field, you hear the grass and you can go with the wind blowing and you can hear the sound on your right side," said Lockwood.
Surgery is usually done in the doctor’s office with a local anesthetic and takes about an hour. The BAHA costs about $12,000 to $15,000 and is sometimes covered by insurance.
The Acoustical Society of America contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.
Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:
Otolaryngology Clin
Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center
CompRehab Plaza
Winston Salem, NC
(336) 716-4161
For more information on hearing and cochlear implants:
Acoustical Society of America
Melville, NY 11747-4502
(516) 576-2360
http://asa.aip.org
asa@aip.org
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