Overview
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| The mission of the Cochlear Implant Team at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center is to be the leader in cochlear implantation, committed to providing quality care to infants, children and adolescents, along with their families, affected by hearing loss. |
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The Cochlear Implant Program at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center strives to help children with severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss.
Cochlear implantation represents one of the greatest advances in the management of children with severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss ("nerve deafness"). By implanting a computerized device into the inner ear, functional hearing can be restored to children who do not benefit from hearing aids.
For children not benefiting from hearing aids and whose families are committed to an oral mode of communication, cochlear implants offer an opportunity to restore functional hearing levels to children.
Who is a Candidate for a Cochlear Implant?
Among children, the FDA has released the following guidelines for cochlear implant candidacy:
- Children 12 months of age through 18 years of age
- Children demonstrating severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss bilaterally
- Children not benefiting from hearing aids
- Children with little to no speech recognition
In general, a child is a candidate for cochlear implantation if he or she has no useful hearing on audiometric testing in both ears and / or is not obtaining adequate auditory stimulation with maximal hearing aid use.
If a child has severe hearing loss but can still obtain benefit from hearing aids, then such a mode of management is preferable to cochlear implantation. Also, if a child has one profoundly deaf ear, but has a normal hearing ear on the opposite side, then that child is not a candidate for a cochlear implant.
Early Intervention
The Cochlear Implant Program is directing its efforts toward children with congenital or early onset deafness in order to offer families the option to address their child's deafness during the early language formative years.
Because speech and communication skill development during the first years of life is so dependent upon hearing, our efforts have been directed at early cochlear implantation for those families desiring this mode of hearing rehabilitation.
By restoring hearing at an earlier age, we hope to maintain these children on as close to a normal development timeline as possible.
The Cochlear Implant Team
The Cochlear Implant Program team consists of professionals from:
Working together, we offers multidisciplinary evaluations, surgery and rehabilitation therapy for children.
Mission
The Cochlear Implant Team at Cincinnati Children's is the leader in cochlear implantation, committed to providing quality care to infants, children and adolescents, along with their families, affected by hearing loss.
Functioning as a team, which includes the patient and family, we determine the appropriateness of cochlear implantation, availability of resources and implementation of rehabilitation.
