What is a Cochlear Implant?

Cochlear implantation is now established as a means of providing useful hearing for severe to profoundly deaf individuals. For young deaf children, a cochlear implant offers the opportunity to learn to communicate effectively through spoken language. For deafened adults and older children, a cochlear implant offers renewed access to speech and sound.

A cochlear implant is an electronic device designed to provide sound information directly to the hearing nerve in the ears of individuals who have a severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss. It stimulates the nerve directly and is used when conventional hearing aids cannot provide enough benefit, which usually means they cannot provide enough benefit to understand spoken language. Nottingham Cochlear Implant Programme regularly reviews the technology and the selection criteria used, ensuring the latest developments are available for candidates.

A cochlear implant consists of:

The external part: Speech processor

1. Microphones built into the speech processor pick up the incoming sounds.
2. The speech processor then converts the sounds into electrical signals and sends it via a cable to the headpiece
3. The headpiece/ coil transmits the signals through the skin to the internal device. This is held in place by a magnet.

There are different ways of wearing the speech processor depending on the needs of the patient.

1. Body-worn devices have the processing unit & battery pack on the body. This is often used with young children
2. Ear level devices have all components behind the ear
3. Children's / Baby's Battery packs have both the processing unit and the microphone behind the ear, but the battery component can be clipped on to clothing.

The internal part: The implant

1. Receiver, which detects the signals being transmitted across the skin from the speech processor and decodes them into electrical pulses.

2. Electrode array receives these electrical pulses. The array is placed into the cochlea (inner ear), stimulating the hearing nerve directly.

We currently use the Cochlear and Advanced Bionics Cochlear Implant Systems

For details on the devices we offer click here (pdf document).

Benefit and Limitations of a cochlear implant

Although cochlear implants cannot restore normal hearing, the vast majority of recipients are able to perceive sound with it. The goal of cochlear implantation is normally to provide access to the range of sounds that make up speech. Results range from awareness of environmental sounds to understanding and developing language. The final outcome depends on a wide variety of factors. For those patients who had hearing previously, an implant will sound different.

Potential benefits may include:

• Detection and awareness of environmental sounds
• Improvement in listening to speech, combined with lip-reading
• Understanding speech without lip-reading
• Discrimination between speech and non-speech sounds
• Using the telephone
• Improvement in the quality of their own voice
• Monitoring loudness of their own voice.
• Development of spoken language in young children