KINGSTON (CMC):
AN HISTORIC procedure has been conducted in Jamaica to restore the hearing of a teacher who specialises in teaching hearing impaired children.
A surgical team led by Jamaican surgeon, Dr. Howard Francis of Johns Hopkins University and Dr. Ediel Brown, the head of the Ear, Nose and Throat Unit and the Kingston Public and Bustamante Children's hospitals, performed the first cochlear implant surgery in the region last Saturday.
The cochlea is the sense organ that translates sound into nerve impulses to be sent to the brain. Each person has two cochlea, one for each ear.
NEW LIFE FOR HEARING IMPAIRED
"Well, we have successfully completed the implantation; post-operatively the patient is doing very well. We anticipate that she should be out of hospital in another two days and in another four or so weeks we hope to be able to put on the external device to have that programmed so that she will be able to hear," Dr. Brown said after the surgery.
According to Dr. Francis, the procedure has opened the way for more hearing-impaired people, including children in Jamaica and the region, to hear again.
"Our plan for more of these surgeries is indeed to proceed with more implan-tations of the cochlear in individuals who have been deafened in adulthood.
"We are starting off with adults who have experience with hearing in the past and have the ability to use spoken language because the rehabilitation process is less complicated in that population but our eyes are very much on the goal of providing intervention for deaf children," Dr. Francis said.
