Surgical solutions are available to alleviate certain forms of hearing loss, including fast growth in recent years of hearing implant technologies. The three principal forms are cochlear implants to address failure of hearing cells in the inner ear, bone-anchored hearing aids to address conductive hearing loss, and middle-ear implants to address problems with the function of the tiny hearing bones in the middle ear.
Cochlear Implants
Cochlear implants include a circuit board that’s implanted in the skull with an electrode extending into the cochlea in the inner ear to transmit hearing signals to the hearing nerve; a sound processor and microphone sit on the side of the head and behind the ear.
Bone Anchored Hearing Aids
When the hearing cells are are working properly but the conductive organs in the middle ear aren’t, sound can be transmitted to the inner ear through the skull bone. A bone-anchored hearing aid is implanted in the skull behind the ear, collects and processes audio signals, and transmits them to the inner ear by creating vibrations in the skull. For people with single-sided deafness, bone-anchored hearing aids can provide audio input from the side of the head with the deaf ear transmitted through the skull to the good ear, providing better localization of sound.
Middle-Ear Implants
When the tiny ossicle hearing bones in the middle ear stop stop working properly, a middle-ear implant can restore their function. The system receives audio signals either through the ear drum or from an external processor and converts them into vibrations that are sent to the inner ear, where a healthy cochlea interprets them as speech and other environmental sounds. Other non-implant medical interventions can address middle-ear problems, including surgery to correct osteoperosis or reduction in mobility of the middle-ear bones.
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