Listen in: Otologics’s fully implantable hearing aid is countersunk into the skull so that it lies flush along the surface underneath the skin and muscle.
Otologics
Is a fully implantable device worth the risks associated with the required surgery?
Hearing aids help millions of people, but many resist them because they think wearing one carries a social stigma. Hearing aids also have serious lifestyle limitations: the hearing impaired can't wear them while showering or swimming, and most models are hard to wear while sleeping. Now, a new kind of hearing aid that aims to overcome these problems is in clinical trials. It's invisible and waterproof because all of its circuitry--including its battery and microphone--is in the user's head.
Developed by Otologics, of Boulder, CO, the device picks up sound with a microphone implanted underneath the skin behind the user's ear. The signal is processed by electronics and sent to a tiny vibrating piston implanted against the small bones in the middle ear. The bones transmit the vibrations to the inner ear, which encodes them as nerve impulses and sends the information to the brain.
"You can have a more normal life," says Otologics's CEO José Bedoya. "You can be exposed to environments in which hearing aids have difficulty operating properly." He also suggests that implantation creates a psychological bond with the device that is life enhancing. "Individuals implanted with the system have said that it becomes a part of you--there's a greater sense of security."
The device is powered by a battery that is recharged when the user places a small radio transmitter against his or her head for 60 to 90 minutes. The transmitter is held to the skin by a magnet in the implant. An inductive coil in the implant converts the radio energy to electricity and recharges the battery with it. The battery can stay inside the body for at least five years, according to the company, before it needs to be replaced. The implanted components are hermetically sealed together to protect against leaks, so the electronics, microphone, and inductive coil are replaced as well. However, the piston in the middle ear remains in place.
The results of a phase I clinical trial of the hearing aid were reported in the August 2007 issue of Otolaryngology--Head and Neck Surgery. Twenty subjects with moderate to severe hearing loss were implanted in one ear. (Seventeen of the subjects had worn conventional hearing aids prior to the study.) The subjects did somewhat worse than with the hearing aid they had previously worn: their ability to hear a range of single-frequency tones dropped between 5 and 12 decibels, and mean word-recognition scores dropped from the low 80 percent range to the high 60 percent range.
On the other hand, a satisfaction survey found that the subjects felt that the device not only improved their hearing, but also sounded more natural than their old hearing aid. The authors of the study speculated that new processing algorithms would improve the test results. Otologics has indicated that it is already working on this.
Its developers hope to make the sound-calibration test standard for many devices that deliver audio.
A digital ear-canal scanner could make hearing aids more comfortable and effective.
At first it will be crude and it will get better and better. Some day it will all be molecular instead of mechanical. We can't help but to tweak ourselves. It's a good thing. The people who try it out are pioneers and deserve our support.
Hello! Are you aware that possible as many as a million innocent citizens in the U.S. and elsewhere are implanted with microchips against their knowledge or will right now and are being tortured and killed? They are being bombarded with electro-magnetic radiation and cannot get relief from the 'slow kill" terrorism. Where have you been? Do a search for mind control and then inform yourselves that you could be next. Go to www.prisonplanet.tv or any of the millions of sites describing how people are now in remote concentration camps. DON'T ALLOW IT, THE TECHNOLOGY IS BEING USED AGAINST THE BEST CITIZENS OF THE COUNTRY! It is NOT being used for anything but to enslave and kill innocent people! It IS THE TERRORISM! For more information, please contact me at epam1a@comcast.net. I can give you a list of URLs to research. The victims need help getting the implants OUT! THAT would be worth while and heroic. Please do your homework and educate yourselves against the killing, or you may be the next victim! Tell everyone! Write your Congressmen, etc. THIS MUST STOP!
Guest (Tagamet)
Are replies on this site Moderated? It would seem that they are not.
This response has got to be a joke. Nobody can be so unenlightened in this day. How can they use email if the "government waves" are gonna get em?
Unfortunately the writer of "unwittingly implanted" is probably serious. My wife is a psychiatric nurse who deals with non-hospitalized mentally ill people. They can be both bright and very delusional. The implanted device belief is actually fairly common.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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Em
10 Comments
Lithium on Ni-Ka implants
much safer to have a deep external hearing aid that can be plugged with a "cork" when showering than play with radio signals recharging devices. Who knows what the side effects of those waves to the brain are? And if something goes wrong, as often happens with electronics, you'll have the surgeon around your ears again...
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Lemuel
1 Comment
Re: Lithium on Ni-Ka implants
I think concerning aids, implants are always more comfortable to wear than external devices.
I don’t see any problem in radiation as long as it is just about magnetic fields.
Although there might be an evanescent small amount of electromagnetic radiation there is absolutely no proof of damage by that.
When you concern that today most people use cell phones more than once a day the effects of the electromagnetic fields produced by the internal aid should be , in comparison to other “every day devices”, irrelevant.
I see a bigger problem in the growing danger of infection. When you use this internal aid and you will have to do a surgery every five years the risk of getting an infection by that is much higher than on “not hearing disabled persons”.
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