Towards a Fully-Implantable Cochlear Implant
Several companies seem to be working on fully-implantable cochlear implants. Med-El -- one of the three major cochlear implant manufacturers, already has an implantable hearing aid on the market, so I guess they are at least researching it. (See http://www.symphonix.com).
Also, Envoy Medical of Minneapolis has a product which from their description also looks like a fully implanted cochlear implant. Since they have no track record with external implants (as far as I can tell) I am a bit concerned about their ability to produce a competitive product. I hope they are working with an established implant company or at least have hired a bunch of experienced implant scientists.
Either way the progress is exciting. When we made the decision to get a cochlear implant for our son, we recognized the like all technology, these products would get much better very quickly. The rigors of medical certification slow the pace of advancement down a bit -- with good reason I suppose, but in general the any given CI seems "out of date" within a two or three years. No matter -- Brendan hears perfectly well, we can manage the system, and have even developed ways of handling situations like talking in the pool.
The most frequently asked question about a fully implanted CI or hearing aid seems to be "where does the microphone go?". Silly question! Where's the microphone in your ear? Built right in, of course! The technical challenges seems to be finding a way to interface the implanted processor with the eardrum and / or middle ear bones. The results must be acceptable enough for Vibrant/Med-El to ship a hearing aid based on this technology.
The other issue is battery life -- most rechargeable batteries have a useful life of a limited number of cycles. Assuming something like one day of use per charge, and 1000 cycles, that means one would need to replace the battery after three years. Surgery every three years doesn't sound fun, but I can see other possibilities. Perhaps an external battery can be used some of the time (especially if it looks / works much like an existing CI processor). This sort of approach might double the life of the internal battery, and surgery every six years doesn't seem too bad. Battery technology doesn't seem to advance quite as fast as CI's, but perhaps the first battery might last six years, and the replacement might be good for twelve. That doesn't seem too bad.
So would we upgrade? Nope. Our results are way better than I had hoped, and someday soon Brendan will be old enough to make his own decisions on these matters. It's also one of the reasons we decided on bilateral implants. Someday he may want to "upgrade" without running the risk of losing all sound.
Categories: cochlear_implants
