An eight-month-old boy has become the youngest patient in the country to get a bilateral simultaneous cochlear implant using the Nucleus 7 (N7) device

Hearing loss impacts one throughout life. While people with mild to moderate amount of hearing loss can cope with this disability with the help of hearing aids, the ones who suffer from severe to profound hearing loss, require cochlear implants to deal with the deafness. If the hearing loss is not treated early enough, the children born with this problem are highly likely to not develop normal speech and language. On the same lines, a case was recently reported at the Indraprastha Hospitals in New Delhi, where an eight months-old baby boy was diagnosed at birth with severe hearing loss in both his ears.

Treated by a senior consultant, ENT and Cochlear Implant Surgeon at the hospital, Dr Ameet Kishore, and assessed by the audiologists at SpHear Speech and Hearing clinic (which supports the Apollo Cochlear Implant programme), the baby boy was initially fitted with hearing aids to ascertain the level of benefit, as per international protocol. The team eventually confirmed that the child would not get normal hearing with hearing aids and thus with the consent of parents, a cochlear surgery was successfully performed.

Dr Kishore said, “When dealing with hearing loss in children of such a young age, the most important part is to restore the hearing of the child as early as possible. In this child’s case, the treatment of choice for good hearing restoration was cochlear implant, and on top of that, it was important to restore hearing in both his ears (bilateral simultaneous cochlear implant), which means that implantation was done in both ears at the same time. It requires extensive surgical expertise and efficiency to safely handle a small eight months-old baby, weighing just 10kg, which is why many people would hesitate to do this surgery. With our experience of close to 1,000 cochlear implants, this was not a concern as we have operated on many small babies safely and efficiently.”

The baby boy has become the youngest patient in the country to get a bilateral simultaneous cochlear implant using the Nucleus 7 (N7) device. “This has also been verified by the Cochlear Corporation Company. He is probably one of the youngest children to have bilateral simultaneous cochlear implant in India, and certainly one of the youngest in Apollo’s bilateral cochlear implant programme,” added Dr Kishore.

He further elaborated that the Nucleus 7 (N7) devices are the most recent cochlear implant devices in the world right now. Dr Kishore said, “The N7 implants have a better chip and connectivity with digital devices. Such improvement in the quality of hardware and software, further enhances the quality in sound that the patient gets, making it extremely good and clear. Getting the latest and most sophisticated cochlear implant will help the baby to do very well in the future.”