Happy International Cochlear Implant Day

25th February 2015

Well since it's International Cochlear Implant Day, I thought that I would check out some historical info on CIs (Cochlear Implants) and was very surprised at what I found.

Electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve began back in the 18th Century with Alessandro Volta, who connected a battery to two metal rods and inserted them into his ears! Further attempts occurred during the 18th & 19th centuries, showing continuous improvements, but no one could yet find a satisfactory solution to helping the hearing of those who were profoundly deaf.

Throughout the 1930s & 40s, interest grew and many more experiments were carried out, increasing as the years went on: 1950, 1957, 1964, 1966, 1971 & 1976 all saw research projects developing the idea of artificial electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve.

In 1972 the speech processor was developed and produced great results, leading to 1000s of devices being fitted in the 1970s & mid-80s. 1980 ensured access to sound by children, when the age limit criteria was lowered from 18 years to 2 yeas of age.

1984 saw the introduction of multi channel devices, increasing sound and speech perception for users.

Since then, development has produced very successful devices, producing high levels of sound recognition and speech perception amongst the Implant community. Results for patients now commonly include the development of normal speech and language and hearing test results surpassing those of their hearing peers! Many implanted children are now schooled in mainstream classrooms with minimal assistance required for them to reach their full potentials.


On a personal note, I am forever grateful for the gift of hearing which we have been able to give to our profoundly deaf princess, cochlear implants are a technological miracle and even two days after her activation we are already seeing results.

Today, we increased our Princess to program 2, increasing the volume inputted by 3%, which is obviously very gradual to allow her to adjust to this new sense and also hopefully prevent any fear or pain caused by excessive noise. Although she can still only hear very loud noises, we noticed more reactions today - knocking against wood, banging the saucepan and bashing plastic toys together all seemed to illicit responses today. The exhaustion however, continues and Princess is needing long naps throughout the day and extra sleep at night, shortening the time she has for listening, but this will pass and I have every faith in her ability to learn to listen & discern sound from her environment.

I do however, want to emphasise that our Princess is still Deaf and always will be.

Whilst CIs allow the user to hear when wearing the devices, they revert to their previous level of hearing once the devices are removed at various points throughout the day e.g. bath/shower, swimming, humid environments or bedtime. We desperately want to make our family bilingual (English & BSL), in order that we can always fully communicate with our Little Princess whether she is wearing her "Magic Ears" or not. My blog will touch on the challenges of hearing families learning BSL for a deaf child and how we will try to integrate into the Deaf community to ensure that our Princess will have links with both Deaf and Hearing peers, in order that she can decide herself how she wants to communicate in the future.