This is just a snippet of the full article, but it does highlight the reasons we have chosen bilateral cochlear implants and why it is important for Audrena to get her implants ASAP. Earlier is better, especially before age 2.
Deaf children: Study shows significant language progress after two cochlear implants
“It’s a huge success to see these children making such strides in language acquisition,” says Christi Hess,
a Ph.D. student in communicative disorders. “Many, after as little as
one or two years with the implant, have language scores within the
normal range, especially those who got the implant before age two.”
Thousands of children get cochlear implants each year, and the surgery is done at an ever-younger age, says Ruth Litovsky, professor of communicative disorders and surgery/otolaryngology.
It’s known that implants made at a younger age deliver results more
quickly, and that a second implant helps children both locate the source
of a sound and understand speech in a noisy room. But until now, it was
not clear if the second implant would improve understanding of spoken
language.
“The most exciting finding is that having two implants does correlate with an improvement in receptive language,” says Hess.
“Many of these children go through an ‘Aha!’ moment, a revelation,
when the inputs they are trying to process suddenly start to make
sense,” says Hess. “They have not had a framework for organizing these
stimuli, but at some point, their brains start to make new connections
and they begin to understand the auditory world.”
There are several reasons why two implants could be better, says
Litovsky, who is director of the binaural hearing and speech lab at the
Waisman Center and has studied cochlear implants for 12 years.
“As good as cochlear implants are, they provide input that is
degraded, and the input to each ear is imperfect. The hypothesis is that
with two implants, the children receive ‘two looks’ at a signal. The
success of surgery in the two ears can vary, so the electrical impulses
reaching the brain from each ear are not identical, and getting a signal
to both ears gives another opportunity to sample and understand the
auditory world," Litovsky says.
The children, who ranged from 4 to 9 years of age at the time of
testing, had had at least one year of experience with the first implant
and got the second implant by age 6.
There are several reasons to study language acquisition in children
with “electric hearing,” Litovsky says. “This helps us understand the
incredibly complex process of converting pressure waves in the air into
sound and then into meaningful information, but this kind of research
also helps parents make momentous decision about implants for their
children who are deaf.”
The surgery is often covered by health insurance, but parents must
decide whether and when to implant and whether to do both ears.
Understanding the possible benefit of a second implant becomes a
critical component of the decision process.
Again, this article highlights the benefit of bilateral implants. Studies continue to show that children with two implants, and who have enough therapy and language exposure, do very nearly as well in life as their normal hearing peers.
Helping To Hear: Cochlear Implants x 2
Little Isabella Rosa is a bright, happy 6 -year-old
girl and she's also almost completely deaf. Her dad couldn't believe it
when tests showed his little girl would never hear.
"We were in denial, we thought that there
was something with the test, how can they tell? She’s just a little
baby,” Vasile Rosa, Isabella's father, told Ivanhoe.
But Isabella can hear now with the help
of not one, but two cochlear implants. A new study from hearing
scientists, found that implanting one implant in each ear increases the
benefit.
“We see that they’re better able to
understand speech in quiet and also in the presence of noise, and we see
a general ease of listening,” Ruth Litovsky, Ph.D, a Hearing Scientist
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison explained.
Researchers found that two implants can
help restore a child’s ability to identify which direction a sound is
coming from, a skill that helps deaf children acquire language and
improve their quality of life.
“Being able to simply listen without
having to constantly look at what you’re listening for, improves your
ease of listening in a way that is very important for everyday
environmental functioning,” Dr. Litovsky said.
Scientists played a moving human voice
through speakers placed at different points around a child. Then, they
asked the child which direction the voice was coming from. Most children
could tell where the voice was coming from until the voice was directly
in front of them.
“You’re giving somebody two opportunities to be able to hear well,” Dr. Litovsky said.
Testing showed that most children
performed almost as well as children with normal hearing. Isabella can
look forward to a life with sounds all around.
“Those cochlear implants will help her and she shouldn’t be any different than any other child,” Rosa said.
What a difference two implants can make.
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