Auditory Stem Implant for a New Zealand Child

Jorja Steele became the first child to receive an auditory stem implant in Australia, after cochlear implants provided no benefit. She is from New Zealand.

Neurosurgeons from three Melbourne hospitals, aided by a team of audiologists, implanted the device - a three-by-six-millimetres pad of electrodes that stimulates hearing pathways in the brain - during a four-hour operation.

Nucleus 22 and 24 Users Needed for Study

Brian Kelly, a graduate of Syracuse University in biomedical engineering, and a bilateral cochlear implant user is seeking subjects for his research project.

He's looking for adult research subjects who have had cochlear implants for at least six months and are using a Nucleus-22 or Nucleus-24 device. Subjects will participate in various experiments that study sound perception "in order to help us better understand how implants interact with the brain to encode sound, and how to improve implant functioning,"

Cochlear Corporation Labor Dispute

Cochlear Corporation is involved in a labor dispute with the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union at its Sydney manufacturing facility.

Neuroplasticity and Cochlear Implants

Researchers have found that cochlear implants may support the restoration of the brain's auditory pathways even after many years of deafness.

The results imply that the brain can reorganize sound processing centers or press into service latent ones based on sound stimulation. Jeanne Guiraud, PhD, and colleagues at the University of Lyon, Edouard Herriot University Hospital, and Advanced Bionics, a firm that makes cochlear implants, worked with deaf subjects from 16 to 74 years old and found that younger subjects and those with a shorter history of deafness showed changes that mirrored patterns in people with normal hearing more closely.

"The results imply a restoration to some extent of the normal organization through the use of the cochlear implant," says Manuel Don, PhD, of the House Ear Institute in Los Angeles. "They also claim to find ties between the degree of restored organization and a hearing task. Such ties are of enormous importance in evaluating cochlear implant benefits."

Canadian Parents Sue Government for Educational Support in Private Schools

A group of parents is planning to launch a lawsuit against the Ontario government, alleging it is discriminating against their children by not funding supports for students with certain disabilities who attend private religious schools.

New Zealand Taxes Cover Cradle to School Support

New Zealand's Labour party government is delivering a full program of support for children with hearing loss, including screening of newborns, providing cochlear implants, and extra support in school, says Education Minister Steve Maharey and Health Minister Pete Hodgson.

Royal National Institute for the Deaf Makes the Case for Affordable Cochlear Implants

The Royal National Institute for the Deaf says that the high cost of cochlear implants is a major limiting factor in the number of people who have received benefits from these medical devices.

New research by RNID, the national charity representing 9 million deaf and hard of hearing people in the UK, shows that millions of deaf people in Europe and the United States are unable to gain access to technology that could help them hear because it is too expensive.

Dr Ralph Holme, Head of Biomedical Research at RNID, says: "There is a gap in the market for a medical device company to produce a low-cost implant by using more cost-efficient manufacturing practices. Our market research shows that such a device would enjoy considerable commercial success whilst benefiting people who may not have had access to it previously."