August 2006 - New Website on Bilateral Cochlear Implants
August 2006 - Family fights for bilateral hearing implants
August 2006 - Major Insurance Carriers Approve Bilateral Cochlear
Implants
October 2006 - Bilateral
Cochlear Implantation - Selected Bibliography of Peer-Reviewed
Publications
November
2006 - Bilateral
Cochlear Implants go Mainstream
December
2006 - Oklahoma
Medicaid Denies Second Implant
January
2007 - Medicaid
Appeal Wins Bilateral Implant Case
January
2007 - Bilateral Cochlear Implants -
Audiological Perspective
January 2007 - Bilateral Cochlear
Implants - Medical Perspective
January
2007 - Deaf children without barriers
January 2007 - Bilateral
Cochlear Implants go Mainstream
February 2007 -
Study looks at benefits of 2 cochlear implants in
deaf children
June 2007 - Two CIs are
Better than One for Kids
June 2007 -
'Sicko' Address Question of Bilateral CIs
June 2007 -
Canada Not Yet On Board with Bilateral CIs
February 2008 -
Fighting Insurance Company for Two Cochlear Implants
April 2008 -
Michael Chorost Goes Bilateral
May 2008 -
Early Bilateral Implantee Discusses her Experience
June 2008 - Bilateral Cochlear Implants: A Case
When Two Are Definitely Superior to One
September 2008 -
Determining if Two Cochlear Implants are
Necessary
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February 2008
Cochlear ear implants have enabled thousands of deaf
people to hear. It's an expensive procedure though and for years in the
1980's and '90s insurance companies frequently denied requests to pay for
it. Eventually, the Americans with Disabilities Act and other changes made
it much more difficult to deny single ear implants. New medical evidence now
suggests that two cochlear implants work far better than one, particularly
in young children, rekindling the battle for insurance coverage.
Full Story
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April 2008
On January 24, 2008, I sat in my audiologist's
office waiting to have my new right ear turned on. For the first time in 30
years, I was about to hear in stereo again. I'd dealt with hearing loss all
my life, because my mother got rubella when she was pregnant with me. I had
used hearing aids since the age of three, but gave up on the right ear in
the 1980s after it gradually died. In 2001, the left ear died too. During a
business trip in Reno, things began to sound fuzzy. After four hours I
canceled my meetings and stumbled back to San Francisco, shocked, dizzy, and
totally deaf. [ . . . ] My auditory nerves remained intact, but there was
nothing to trigger them. The nerves could be triggered, though, by a device
called a cochlear implant. In September 2001, a surgeon at Stanford Hospital
drilled an inch and a half into my head and threaded 16 tiny electrodes into
my left ear's cochlea. The electrodes were controlled by a computer chip
embedded in the surface of my skull underneath the scalp. After a few weeks
of healing, I got an external computer that sent it data. It sat on my ear,
looking like a hearing aid, and radioed a megabit of data per second to the
chip in my head.
Full Story
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May 2008
In 2000, Farmer became one of a small, but
pioneering wave of adults who received two cochlear implants at the same
time. Early recipients only received one implant. Doctors at the Iowa
implant center performed the first duo, or bilateral, implant in 1996. But
many more questions had to be researched to convince skeptics - notably,
insurers - that two implants worked better than one, that the benefits of
two justified the increased costs. That's how Farmer and nine others became
involved in the University of Iowa's research. The decision was not without
drawbacks. The magnets that attached the external part of the device to the
implant meant she would not be able to undergo MRI, or magnetic resonance
imaging, for medical testing. "Not even get near one," she says. If an
innovation even more advanced than cochlear implants, say regenerating
hearing cells, came along, she would not be an eligible candidate. Hearing
organs in both ears would have already been destroyed and replaced by
implants. "Having one done was no big deal," she says. "But getting them
both? I paced for a week." The potential benefits had a sweet sound.
Full Story
