Department of Ear, Nose and Throat, Shahid Beheshti University of , Tehran, Iran.
Abstract: (1620 Views)
The studies on cochlear implants have been conducted in the United States, Austria, Brasil, France, Finland, and some other countries. Up to now, this technique does not seem to have a wide spread application. Indeed it can only apply cases of deafness still presenting sufficient neural remnants to transmit the message. Moreover, the patient must be totally deaf( quasi complete loss of har cells), because any auditory remnant, even minimal, can be exploited by classical electro-acoustic amplification, which will(until now) give, in this sort of case, better results than cochlear implant, especially as the cochlear implant destroys any remaining sensory structures. Furthermore, the nervous message thus obtained is very different from the normal one, so that the interpretation is extremely difficult and require training, certainly over several years, and ev<.!n several ten of years, as is the case for rehabilitation for quasi-totally deaf children with the present technique. In any case, it is the direction of research which must be explored precisely and scientifically; the future will tell us whether this project must be abandoned or developed.