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Article
As technology advances and manufacturing costs decline, even moderately deaf people can qualify for a cochlear implant. The surgery once was reserved for those who were at least 98 percent deaf.
Harold Fegley first experienced ringing in his ears in 1983, and that began a quick descent into deafness.
The Fleetwood resident, then 56, lost his hearing just as his eyesight also began to fail, and despite constant care and support from his wife, Ruth, he felt isolated.
“There were times I actually thought of suicide,” Fegley said. “It's an awful thing to say, but what is there to live for if you can't hear and you can't see?
“They talk about lip reading and sign language. I couldn't do either.”
But three years ago, Fegley, who was more than 90 percent deaf, was given a lifeline to sound when he received a cochlear implant at Reading Hospital. Now Fegley has a roughly 85 percent hearing capacity.
Until recently, cochlear implants had been a technology out of reach to all but the most profoundly deaf.
There have been only about 100 cochlear implant recipients in the 20 years Reading Hospital has performed the surgery. Outside of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, only Reading, Hershey Medical Center and Geisinger Medical Center in Danville perform the surgery in Pennsylvania.
“It was a case of, ‘Your hearing is too good, come back next year and we'll test you again,' ” said Michele Mundok, a specialist with Cochlear America, a leading manufacturer of cochlear implants.
The severity of deafness depends on the damage to tiny hairs in the cochlea a snail-shaped structure at the base of the inner ear that turn sound waves into electrical impulses, activating a hearing nerve in the brain.
When only a few are damaged, a hearing aid can stimulate enough of those hairs to create sound.
But in some people, all or most of those hairs are destroyed, leaving nothing for a hearing aid to work with. A cochlear implant, however, can stimulate the nerve directly.
Fegley was among thousands in the United States who were considered too deaf for a hearing aid but still not deaf enough to qualify for an implant.
That was anyone who was less than 98 percent deaf, Mundok said.
“You basically had to be totally deaf, no hearing whatsoever, before you could even think about getting an implant,” she said.
But as technology advanced and manufacturing costs declined, even moderately deaf people with as little as 40 percent hearing loss can qualify for a cochlear implant.
Dr. Gianfranco Toso, the implant surgeon at Reading Hospital since the program's inception in 1986, said success stories such as Fegley's will continue to increase as technology improves and becomes even more widely available.
“The (post-surgery) human responses we're getting are really amazing,” Toso said.
For example, Toso said one of his first patients was a 50-year-old man who went deaf 30 years earlier while studying abroad in Italy.
After 30 years of not saying a word, Toso said, the man found his voice after getting the implant and his voice was fluent Italian.
“His personality was locked in by deafness,” Toso said.
Technology soon will be available to create a hybrid implant that combines the best of bionics with regular hearing aids, Mundok said.
Instead of snaking deep into the cochlear, a shorter electrode can avoid damaging hair cells that remain alive, allowing the recipient to retain any natural hearing ability.
“If we can hear acoustically, then that is a far better option than hearing electronically,” Mundok said.
Implant technology is not the only thing to have come a long way since the 1980s.
Toso said he was initially skeptical of a procedure that many considered barbaric because the electronic stimulus provided by cochlear implants comes from electrodes inserted near the brain.
“I used to think it was totally nuts, but slowly I began to believe in what I was doing,” he said.
As technology advances and manufacturing costs decline, even moderately deaf people can qualify for a cochlear implant. The surgery once was reserved for those who were at least 98 percent deaf.
Harold Fegley first experienced ringing in his ears in 1983, and that began a quick descent into deafness.
The Fleetwood resident, then 56, lost his hearing just as his eyesight also began to fail, and despite constant care and support from his wife, Ruth, he felt isolated.
“There were times I actually thought of suicide,” Fegley said. “It's an awful thing to say, but what is there to live for if you can't hear and you can't see?
“They talk about lip reading and sign language. I couldn't do either.”
But three years ago, Fegley, who was more than 90 percent deaf, was given a lifeline to sound when he received a cochlear implant at Reading Hospital. Now Fegley has a roughly 85 percent hearing capacity.
Until recently, cochlear implants had been a technology out of reach to all but the most profoundly deaf.
There have been only about 100 cochlear implant recipients in the 20 years Reading Hospital has performed the surgery. Outside of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, only Reading, Hershey Medical Center and Geisinger Medical Center in Danville perform the surgery in Pennsylvania.
“It was a case of, ‘Your hearing is too good, come back next year and we'll test you again,' ” said Michele Mundok, a specialist with Cochlear America, a leading manufacturer of cochlear implants.
The severity of deafness depends on the damage to tiny hairs in the cochlea a snail-shaped structure at the base of the inner ear that turn sound waves into electrical impulses, activating a hearing nerve in the brain.
When only a few are damaged, a hearing aid can stimulate enough of those hairs to create sound.
But in some people, all or most of those hairs are destroyed, leaving nothing for a hearing aid to work with. A cochlear implant, however, can stimulate the nerve directly.
Fegley was among thousands in the United States who were considered too deaf for a hearing aid but still not deaf enough to qualify for an implant.
That was anyone who was less than 98 percent deaf, Mundok said.
“You basically had to be totally deaf, no hearing whatsoever, before you could even think about getting an implant,” she said.
But as technology advanced and manufacturing costs declined, even moderately deaf people with as little as 40 percent hearing loss can qualify for a cochlear implant.
Dr. Gianfranco Toso, the implant surgeon at Reading Hospital since the program's inception in 1986, said success stories such as Fegley's will continue to increase as technology improves and becomes even more widely available.
“The (post-surgery) human responses we're getting are really amazing,” Toso said.
For example, Toso said one of his first patients was a 50-year-old man who went deaf 30 years earlier while studying abroad in Italy.
After 30 years of not saying a word, Toso said, the man found his voice after getting the implant and his voice was fluent Italian.
“His personality was locked in by deafness,” Toso said.
Technology soon will be available to create a hybrid implant that combines the best of bionics with regular hearing aids, Mundok said.
Instead of snaking deep into the cochlear, a shorter electrode can avoid damaging hair cells that remain alive, allowing the recipient to retain any natural hearing ability.
“If we can hear acoustically, then that is a far better option than hearing electronically,” Mundok said.
Implant technology is not the only thing to have come a long way since the 1980s.
Toso said he was initially skeptical of a procedure that many considered barbaric because the electronic stimulus provided by cochlear implants comes from electrodes inserted near the brain.
“I used to think it was totally nuts, but slowly I began to believe in what I was doing,” he said.