DEVICE
COULD MAKE COCHLEAR IMPLANTS MORE CONVENIENT
(April 30,
2012) Cochlear implants have restored basic hearing to some 220,000 deaf
people, yet a microphone and related electronics must be worn outside the head,
raising reliability issues, preventing patients from swimming and creating
social stigma.
Now, a
University of Utah engineer and colleagues in Ohio have developed a tiny
prototype microphone that can be implanted in the middle ear to avoid such
problems.
The
proof-of-concept device has been successfully tested in the ear canals of four
cadavers, the researchers report in a study just published online in the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers journal Transactions on
Biomedical Engineering.
The
prototype – about the size of an eraser on a pencil – must be reduced in size
and improved in its ability to detect quieter, low-pitched sounds, so tests in
people are about three years away, says the study’s senior author, Darrin J.
Young, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the
University of Utah and USTAR, the Utah Science Technology and Research
initiative.
The study
showed incoming sound is transmitted most efficiently to the microphone if
surgeons first remove the incus or anvil – one of three, small, middle-ear
bones. U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval would be needed for an
implant requiring such surgery.