Description

This video by TV360 explains the process of implanting a cochlear implant for hearing impaired children part 3/3.

Transcript

Using Cochlear Implants for Children Part 3/3 In the video of Alex and his mom she describes very, very nice how an implant works with some graphics that are helpful. The cochlear implants surgery takes about 1 ½ to 3 hours depending a little bit on this set up and the type of implant that ‘s used and it’s implant it through and incision behind the ear it’s a fairly small incision that comes up behind the ear and then takes a little curve backward. We expose the mastoid which is the bone behind the ear and open that up and go down beneath the ear drum and actually approach the middle ear from behind the ear canal. We open up a certain little space called the facial recess and identify the cochlea and you can see that looking through the facial recess as a prominence. There are certain landmarks that we use to determine where the implant should go in then we make a little opening in the cochlear and feed the electrode in. The implant doesn’t work right away so many people think as soon the surgeries are there’ll be able to hear and it’s actually just the start of a long journey. So after the child goes home they will come back to see me 10 to 12 days after the surgery. We’ll check everything make sure it’s healing well and then they will see the audiologist that day as well. She will make an appointment for them and the family to come back for activation. So activation is when the external part of the implant is placed and that’s when the parts put behind the ear and we make sure that the magnet adheres to the internal device well and then the process of turning on the implant begins. So the audiologist has a big job they need to program the implant so what that means is that they set each of the different frequencies at a certain level of reception and the hard part about doing that and the child is that they’ve never heard before they don’t know how it should sound. So when we do a cochlear implant in an adult they can say that sounds really funny or could you make it a little more of this or a little more of that so it sounds more natural. But the child can’t do that so we have tricks that we use to program children and it’s a long process the child will be programmed initially, it’s very, very important for children to have follow up in their communities to have good therapy most of our children get daily therapy so they have to start the process that many children start before birth are being able to hear. So there are a lot of malfunctions unfortunately but they’re far and in between, the external portion can be changed as technologies come along there are changes in the speeches processors and those devices are replaced periodically but the internal device should not ever have to be changed and so for the most part we put them in to stay forever.