HHIssues

From the Miami Herald, today.

Published Friday, April 13, 2001

Device heralds a new era in dealing with hearing loss

BY SHARI RUDAVSKY
srudavsky@h...

Elizabeth Cowen never told friends and co-workers she had hearing troubles. She chose hairstyles that covered her hearing aids and tried to position herself so she could lip-read what people said.

The Cooper City resident may no longer have such problems.

On Thursday, she received one of the next generation of hearing devices that couples an external, removable component with one implanted in the ear.

In February, doctors at the University of Miami's Ear Institute attached an internal receiver to a bone in Cowen's middle ear. Two months later, audiologists took the final step: giving her the removable external device that will pick up sounds from her environment and send them to the receiver inside her ear.

As Susan Lopez, an Ear Institute audiologist, fine-tuned the component, the 51-year-old Cowen could only marvel at what she heard -- down to the hum of the air conditioner.

``It's not as tinny sounding as I thought it would be. It's somewhere in between wearing hearing aids and not wearing any aid at all,'' she said. ``I can't believe I can hear you. I would never have been able to hear what you said.''

Approved by the FDA in August, the Vibrant Soundbridge represents the future of hearing correction for people with moderate to severe hearing loss. UM doctors participated in the clinical trials, implanting the device in 11 patients. Only two other sites in Florida offer the Soundbridge to patients.

The Soundbridge costs about $15,000, including surgery, as opposed to traditional hearing aids, which can cost several thousand dollars. But for some patients, traditional hearing aids are uncomfortable or impossible to wear.

The Soundbridge works by more effectively imitating the way unimpaired ears process sound to the brain. Under normal conditions, sound makes its way down a path to the inner ear where it vibrates the eardrum and in turn thousands of hair cells then create the stimuli the brain reads as sound.

Traditional hearing aids work by amplifying the sound as it travels down the ear canal. The louder the sound, the heavier the vibration and the more hair cells that move, producing sound in the brain. The Soundbridge bypasses the ear canal all together. A device smaller than a grain of rice sits inside the bone on the middle ear. A small processor sitting just behind the ear transmits sound to the receiver which then vibrates the inner ear as it would if the sound had come down through the ear canal.

It's a concept that may one day make traditional hearing aids as obsolete as the ear horns and trumpets of 80 years ago. Other products in development use similar theory to restore a patient's hearing, if only temporarily. Down the road a completely implantable device may become available.

``This is just a step in the technological development of treating hearing loss,'' said Dr. Fred Telischi, Ear Institute director. ``For the population we've been using it for, it's been very successful.''

Both doctors and the company recommend the Soundbridge primarily for patients who've tried traditional hearing aids and discarded them for one reason or another.

Cowen did not like her hearing aids, but they offered her only hope of hearing at least most of what occurred around her. Surgery appealed to her because she had always hated the image of herself with aids. ``To me, hearing aids are what older people wear,'' said Cowen, a general manager at Harrison Uniform.

Fifteen years ago, when Cowen got her first hearing aid, she sat in the sounding booth as it was being tested and sobbed.

Thursday, she smiled. When she removed her traditional hearing aids, high-pitched squeals of feedback filled the room. Then Lopez started asking the mother of three how the device was working.

``How's my voice,'' asked Lopez. ``Is it more tinny? More bass-y?''

``Actually,'' said Cowan, ``you sound great.''