Breakthrough for deaf children. Good Aussie company

[Guest guest]

Hi All,

Here is some good news in this era of gloom & doom.

While not about CRONing, life extension or vegetarian science, deafness touches

us all in some way and it is good to see

science has found a workable solution which can give otherwise severely

disadvantaged children and adults a equal chance

in life.

Even better that Cochlear is a Aussie success story:

http://www.cochlear.com

Hope you, your families and friends are safe & well,

Greg

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_1604000/1604956.stm

Breakthrough for deaf children

Doctors have perfected a quick and relatively straightforward way to restore

hearing to profoundly deaf children. It has

been possible for some time to restore hearing by inserting an implant into a

part of the ear called the cochlea.

But now doctors at the Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham have developed a way

to insert the implant using keyhole

surgery. The procedure involves inserting the implant through a tiny 3cm cut

behind the ear. It causes only minimal

scarring and significantly reduces the risk of infection. The child's hair can

simply be pinned back while the

operation takes place, and there are no stitches to remove afterwards.

Previously, the operation was only possible through a much larger incision in

the skull, which left a noticeable scar.

It is thought that two-and-a-half-year-old Alice Hardie is the first youngster

in the world to undergo keyhole surgery

to have the implant fitted. Before the operation, Alice was profoundly deaf.

But Alice's mother Sue said she has since

made tremendous progress.

" She can hear the phone ringing, and recognises it for what it is. The keyhole

technique is fantastic. My daughter went

down for surgery and she came back five hours later looking very much the same

as she had done went she went down. In

fact, we were only in hospital overnight. It was unbelievable. We now have

every hope that Alice will be able to live

a completely normal life, like her hearing brother, and go to mainstream

school. "

The cochlea is the part of the ear which transforms acoustic signals into

electric signals which can be understood by

the brain. The implant contains an electrode which enables the brain to

understand sounds by effectively bypassing the

parts of the ear that do not work. The keyhole surgery technique has been

developed by Professor Gerry O'Donoghue.

He said: " Cochlear implants give deaf children the gift of hearing but the more

conventional incision was somewhat

excessive. Technology now allows us to operate on younger and younger children,

but at the same time we needed to

develop a technique which reduced the psychological effects as well as the

physical scarring, because this could often

deter children or prospective parents from considering implantation as an

option. "

There are approximately 23,000 deaf children in the UK. Over 40,000 children and

adults have cochlear implants

world-wide.