The Dallas Morning News writes a story about a teen who is deaf and doing very well with a cochlear implant. He has a bright future ahead of him.
The article also looks at the contoversy with cochlear implants. Here are insightful statistics on deafness and cochlear implants that appear at the end of the story:
According to the Food and Drug Administration’s 2005 data, nearly 100,000 people worldwide have received cochlear implants.
In the United States, roughly 22,000 adults and nearly 15,000 children have received them.
Cochlear implants were first approved by the FDA in the United States in 1985 for adults and in 1990 for children.
Since 1990, the North Texas Cochlear Implant Program has given about 350 children cochlear implants.
About 1 in every 1,000 infants is born deaf. Another 1 in every 1,000 infants has a hearing impairment significant enough to make speaking difficult.
More than half of all deafness or hearing impairment is believed to have genetic cause(s). Recessive hearing impairment accounts for the largest portion of deafness or hearing impairment.
About 90 percent of infants who are born deaf are born to hearing parents.
Sources: Callier Center for Communication Disorders and the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders
Interestingly enough, I went to House Ear Institute in 1984 to learn about cochlear implants. At the time, they were not FDA-approved (stats say 1985) and only had a few channels.
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god bless stats eh? they are some remarkable results!
I guess those 1985 stats are only for multi-channel implants? I got a single-channel House implant in 1984. I was only age 8 so it must have been FDA-approved for implanation into children. I do remember that a few years later, an older student at my school was the first minor in Dallas to get a multi-channel implant. I occasionally wonder about her and whether she is still using it.
Cochlear implant is good for hard of hearing not for totally deaf people. Nah, it is perfect for hearing people who loses hearing. I will never ever get that. They don’t understand nothing about deaf people who born that way. If cochlear implant in deaf person’s ear, all they can feel is vibrate period. They will not able to hear any words at all just noises. They can’t identify the words. Stop wasting ur time to try on deafies.
Not true. As a profoundly deaf person, I can distinguish sounds and recognize words to songs that I know. It is not just noise and vibrations — in fact, I don’t feel any vibrations with my cochlear implant.
To Melissa….
Hi, I am profound deaf. Currently, I am wearing Nucleus 22 3G BTE and is loving it every minutes of my life. I just wanted to let you know that what you said “..all they can feel is vibrate..” is not true. There is no such thing as vibrate. I can not feel any vibrate coming through my ears. I can distinguish sounds/speech and recognize words very well.
My advice to you is to do research (depth) before posting anything. My question is, do you have cochlear implant?
ROFL… Vibrate in our ears.. That is the funniest thing I have ever heard..