A 40-YEAR-OLD woman, who has been hearing-impaired since birth, will be given a new lease on life tomorrow.
Local and overseas doctors will fit her with a device to improve her hearing in what is being called the 'first cochlear implant surgery in the English-speaking Caribbean'.
Dr. Aye Thwin, an audiological physician and secretary of the Caribbean Hearing Health Foundation, said the Foundation is teaming with Jamaican-born neuro-otologist and Ear, Nose, Throat (ENT) professor at the Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Howard Francis, to perform the surgery.
"He (Dr. Francis) has a passion about hearing-impaired children and they (the Johns Hopskins University) have been doing the largest series of cochlear implants," Dr. Thwin said.
DAMAGED NERVES
She explained that the cochlear is the inner ear which is shaped like a sea shell; (the ear consists of the outer, middle and inner ear). Damaged nerves in the cochlear or beyond that point are associated with hearing loss.
Dr. Thwin said there are two types of hearing loss - conductive hearing loss and sensory neural hearing loss. Conductive hearing loss relates to the conduction of sound in the outer, middle or inner ear.
"The conductive hearing loss can be temporary when, for example, fluid collects in the middle ear," she said. "Once the fluid is cleared hearing is resumed. Sensory neural hearing loss is permanent in the sense that hearing aids can't help much but can amplify the sound coming in."
Persons with very low residual hearing usually benefit from the cochlear implant. Dr. Thwin explained that, during the surgery tomorrow, an electrode will be placed in the cochlear to stimulate the patient's nerve endings. There is also an external device, the speech processor, that has a microphone to receive sound energy which will be converted to electrical energy, which will eventually reach the electrode implanted in the cochlear (through a receiver) where the brain can be stimulated to hear sounds as voice.
She said that before now, it was difficult to perform this surgery here because of the high cost of the cochlear implant and because post-surgery rehabilitation was not available. Johns Hopkins University is assisting with training and equipment.
They are also helping the foundation to set up a rehabilitation centre on Red Hills Road in St. Andrew.
"We need proper rehabilitation service ... because children born deaf have never heard sound and we put in a cochlear implant but they don't know what they are hearing so we have to train the brain all over," Dr. Thwin said.
