Hearing loss is a problem common not only to aged people. Most senses normally fade with age, but hearing problems affect many children and young adults as well. Due to various traumas or congenital conditions, children can be born with an impaired hearing or develop hearing loss through the lifetime. While mild hearing loss may be depressing and disappointing, middle to severe hearing loss can put humans at risk. Without a proper perception of external sounds, people cannot adequately react to the sound of any external danger approaching them.
There are various ways of treating hearing loss, and the choice depends on the cause of the impairment. Hearing aids help with damage done to the receptors during normal aging, while various types of implants work if any part of the inner ear is damaged. A cochlear implant is one of them. The device entirely replaces the function of the impaired organ and provide signals directly to the brain. The technology has been experimentally used since 2014, and lately several large medical companies engaged in manufacturing of the implants.
Cochlear implants appeared to be very helpful to people with moderate to entire hearing loss caused by damaged cochlea. A system of a sound processor and electrodes captures the sound and delivers it to the hearing nerve ensuring more than satisfactory hearing. Benefits of the implant were experimentally proven – people can hear sounds better with the implant than with hearing aid as well as focus in the noisy room and talk on the phone. When implanted in deaf children before the age of 18 months, the implant assures normal development of language skills for a successful social engagement.