Ear implants for the deaf with no strings attached

[Mudkipz]

I guess I was more wondering, if something somehow happened (say, EMP or some other electrical shock, which damaged the CI's circuitry) and the CI was delivering some sort of high-pitched whine directly into your auditory nerves, can you simply remove the battery, or is it powered internally?

That would be the sort of thing I would be worried about with getting a fully internal implant - I've had so many of my electronics bug out or do something that would be painfully annoying without the ability to either rip out the power cord or battery to immediately shut it off. (Admittedly, I would hope that a CI would be a much much higher quality device than the electronics I own, but even still...)

Are you saying that if you take off the external processor off your head's magnet (internal implant) and the pain would go away until you put it back on? Or have surgery because your head hurts even with external processor off? It could happen, but I'm not sure what happens next because I never had one myself (that would be so annoying that it forces me not to wear it) or read information about something like that.

 

[StSapphire]

Are you saying that if you take off the external processor off your head's magnet (internal implant) and the pain would go away until you put it back on? Or have surgery because your head hurts even with external processor off? It could happen, but I'm not sure what happens next because I never had one myself (that would be so annoying that it forces me not to wear it) or read information about something like that.

Quick background - I'm hearing, so I have no implants at all, nor do I know much at all about them. So this is all coming entirely from my imagination, which may very well be next to impossible with real life CIs.

The way I (thought) existing CIs worked was that when you remove the external processor, you go back to being as deaf as you naturally are without CI or anything else, because the processor is what has/uses batteries to power the implant. Therefore, anything that could mess with your program or otherwise cause your implant to make you hear any noise that you don't want to can simply be removed and fixed without needing surgery.

With a fully internal implant, even with a wireless control panel, I can at least imagine a scenario (say... playing around and falling, and you hit your head just the wrong way, maybe) where the wireless controller thingy doesn't work for turning the processor off, and the program gets changed to one that doesn't work just right or something similar. In that situation, (if that's actually possible with these, might not be) then you'd need to get surgery to fix that.

 

[Beach girl]

I don't think that would be possible, from what little I know about it.

 

[Mudkipz]

Quick background - I'm hearing, so I have no implants at all, nor do I know much at all about them. So this is all coming entirely from my imagination, which may very well be next to impossible with real life CIs.

The way I (thought) existing CIs worked was that when you remove the external processor, you go back to being as deaf as you naturally are without CI or anything else, because the processor is what has/uses batteries to power the implant. Therefore, anything that could mess with your program or otherwise cause your implant to make you hear any noise that you don't want to can simply be removed and fixed without needing surgery.

Correct. If you hear something unusual and is annoying, you can either adjust your CI's settings to the way you like or you can take it off and it's gone. But... tinnitus (and others?) is a different story and can't be "removed" by just taking off the external processor as it's all in your head.

With a fully internal implant, even with a wireless control panel, I can at least imagine a scenario (say... playing around and falling, and you hit your head just the wrong way, maybe) where the wireless controller thingy doesn't work for turning the processor off, and the program gets changed to one that doesn't work just right or something similar. In that situation, (if that's actually possible with these, might not be) then you'd need to get surgery to fix that.

OOO... ooo... jeez- I don't know, but that would be scary. You gotta know that Cochlear is probably discussing this and find a way to prevent this from happening. The remote would be the "external processor" where you must protect it and have it with you, so you can control and change things around with the internal processor inside your head.

But... think about it. I have fell/hit on my head plenty of times (sports, accidents, etc.) and the internal implant is still working, if not... even if you put the external processor back on, it wouldn't be working still. There would be nothing you can do about it unless you get a surgery. Same idea with a fully internal implant.

Cross your fingers and hope the fully internal implant would be the same "quality" as the internal implants of today.

Does this answers (bolded) your question? ... :P

 

[birdlady]

I wouldn't want to hear 24/7...I would rather have the option of going deaf whenever I feel like it especially when my son had his terrible twos tantrums.

sometimes it is nice to hear the silence but, I still hear my heart beat.. drives me nuts and the pressure ..

 

[mlb 10th inning]

Cochlear is now licensing Otologics's technology and hopes to have a complete system working within five years.

Thats what they said in April 2011.

A few months later in August 2011, they said,. "We believe it is now only a matter of time before (the company) has a totally implantable cochlear implant hearing system. It may well be targeting launch within three years," he says.


That was EXACTLY a year ago. It is August 2012. That means that the Totally Implantable Cochlear Implant is targeting launch within two years.

A commercial Totally Implantable CI should be available in the market in EXACTLY a year. No later than two years.

 

[deafdyke]

It said it MAY.... not that it WILL.....and you keep ignoring the fact that most likely this is going to not really take off. It might have back in say the 90's when health care costs weren't as sky high. But this doesn't even have ANY impact on functionailty. You're also not getting that the results have been mixed, and that people with this system hear 80% of what people with external mics hear...that means they are WORSE in sound quality. It's just like the dinky ITE aids not having as much power as the BTEs. You sacrifice sound quality for astehtics.

 

[mlb 10th inning]

It said it MAY.... not that it WILL.....

Bing dictionary

Definition of may: indicates permission: indicates that somebody is asking somebody for permission or giving somebody permission to do something

and you keep ignoring the fact that most likely this is going to not really take off.

It's taking off like a jet.

But this doesn't even have ANY impact on functionailty. You're also not getting that the results have been mixed, and that people with this system hear 80% of what people with external mics hear...that means they are WORSE in sound quality. It's just like the dinky ITE aids not having as much power as the BTEs. You sacrifice sound quality for astehtics.

No. 80 percent with the internal microphone was preliminary (beginning) findings more than a year ago.

Right now, the Otologic's internal microphone is 100 percent as good as an external microphone.

Articles that prove it.


Sweet sound published by the House Research Institute


In a first clinical trial of patients published last year in the journal Otolaryngology, patients who received the Otologics Carina implant in only one ear performed slightly worse on hearing tests than with the conventional hearing aids they had used before the surgery.


But.. in the company's second, still unpublished clinical trial before which tweaks were made patients heard more clearly than people in the first trial as well as those with conventional hearing aids.

 

[mlb 10th inning]

.
.Cochlear said this...









Cochlear, he says, is moving towards trials, with key hurdles, such as a battery that is recharged through the skin and a problematic implanted microphone, already overcome.

 

[mlb 10th inning]

.

Cochlear is using Otologic's internal microphone.








.

 

[mlb 10th inning]

I heard that Med-El thought about making a cochlear implant processor go inside the ear canal like the Lyrics hearing device? This is as good as a Totally Implantable CI,too.

 

[mlb 10th inning]

Partially inserted cochlear implant


Abstract

A cochlear implant system has a signal processor that fits in the ear canal of a user. The signal processor processes an acoustic signal present in the ear of the user to produce a representative radio signal. A power transmitter transmits an electrical power signal through the skin of the user. A cochlear implant receives the radio signal and the electrical power signal and produces for the auditory nerve of the user an electrical stimulation signal representative of the acoustic signal.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Inventors:

Zierhofer; Clemens M. (Kundl, AU), Hochmair; Erwin S. (Axams, AU), Hochmair; Ingeborg J. (Axams, AU)



Assignee:

Med-El