A cochlear implant (CI) is a surgically implanted neuroprosthesis that provides a person who has moderate-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss with sound perception. With the help of therapy, cochlear implants may allow for improved speech understanding in both quiet and noisy environments. A CI bypasses acoustic hearing by direct electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve. Through everyday listening and auditory training, cochlear implants allow both children and adults to learn to interpret those signals as speech and sound.
Deaf culture is the set of social beliefs, behaviors, art, literary traditions, history, values, and shared institutions of communities that are influenced by deafness and which use sign languages as the main means of communication. When used as a cultural label especially within the culture, the word deaf is often written with a capital D and referred to as "big D Deaf" in speech and sign. When used as a label for the audiological condition, it is written with a lower case d. Carl G. Croneberg coined the term "Deaf Culture" and he was the first to discuss analogies between Deaf and hearing cultures in his appendices C/D of the 1965 Dictionary of American Sign Language.
Unilateral hearing loss (UHL) is a type of hearing impairment where there is normal hearing in one ear and impaired hearing in the other ear.
Graeme Milbourne Clark AC is an Australian Professor of Otolaryngology at the University of Melbourne. Worked in ENT surgery, electronics and speech science contributed towards the development of the multiple-channel cochlear implant. His invention was later marketed by Cochlear Limited.
The Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital was a health facility on Gray's Inn Road in London. It closed in October 2019 when services transferred to the new Royal National ENT and Eastman Dental Hospitals on Huntley Street, London, WC1E 6DG. The Huntley Street hospital continues to provide specialist ENT, sleeps and allergy services and is part of University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
Claudia Roden is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including A Book of Middle Eastern Food, The New Book of Middle Eastern Food and Arabesque—Sumptuous Food from Morocco, Turkey and Lebanon.
An auditory brainstem implant (ABI) is a surgically implanted electronic device that provides a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf, due to retrocochlear hearing impairment. In Europe, ABIs have been used in children and adults, and in patients with neurofibromatosis type II.
Henryk Skarzynski is a Polish doctor otolaryngologist, audiologist and phoniatrist, creator and director of Warsaw Institute of Physiology and Pathology of Hearing and World Hearing Center in Kajetany.
Deafness has varying definitions in cultural and medical contexts. In medical contexts, the meaning of deafness is hearing loss that precludes a person from understanding spoken language, an audiological condition. In this context it is written with a lower case d. It later came to be used in a cultural context to refer to those who primarily communicate through sign language regardless of hearing ability, often capitalized as Deaf and referred to as "big D Deaf" in speech and sign. The two definitions overlap but are not identical, as hearing loss includes cases that are not severe enough to impact spoken language comprehension, while cultural Deafness includes hearing people who use sign language, such as children of deaf adults.
MED-EL is a global medical technology company specializing in hearing implants and devices. They develop and manufacture products including cochlear implants, middle ear implants and bone conduction systems.
The Bionics Institute is an Australian medical research institute focusing on medical device development. It is located in Melbourne, Australia.
Claude-Henri Chouard is a French surgeon born on 3 July 1931 in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, this Otologist has been a full member of the Académie Nationale de Médecine since 1999. He was director of the AP-HP Laboratory of Auditory Prosthesis and director of the ENT Research Laboratory at Paris-Saint-Antoine University Hospital from 1967 to 2001. He was also head of the institution's ENT Department from 1978 to 1998. In 1982, he was elected a member of the International Collegium ORL-AS. He achieved worldwide recognition in the late 1970s thanks to the work completed by his Paris laboratory's multidisciplinary team on the multichannel cochlear implant. This implanted electronic hearing device was developed at Saint-Antoine and alleviates bilateral total deafness. When implanted early in young children, it can also help overcome the spoken language problems associated with deafness.
Thomas J. Balkany, M.D. is an American ear surgeon, otolaryngologist and neurotologist specializing in cochlear implantation. He is the Hotchkiss Endowment Distinguished Professor and Chairman Emeritus in the Department of Otolaryngology and Professor of Neurological Surgery and Pediatrics at the University of Miami's Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine. Additionally, he is a fellow of the American Academy of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery, the American College of Surgeons and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Jitendra Mohan Hans is an Indian Otorhinolaryngologist, medical researcher and the inventor of HANS speech valve for speech rehablitation after laryngeal cancer surgery. He is a founder member of the Cochlear Implant Group of India and has been a part of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) sponsored project team that developed an indigenous Bionic Ear in 2014. Born on 27 November 1955, he graduated in medicine from the University of Meerut in 1978 He has served as the Honorary ENT Surgeon to the Prime Minister of India and is a government nominee at Ali Yajur Jung National Institute for Deafness, Mumbai and the All India Institute of Speech and Hearing, Mysore. He is reported to have pioneered the minimally-invasive surgical techniques for cochlear implants and is a member of the advisory boards of the Union Public Service Commission and World Health Organization (WHO). The Government of India awarded him the fourth highest civilian honour of the Padma Shri in 2005, for his contributions towards medicine.
Edith Aileen Maude Whetnall, was an ear, nose and throat surgeon. She was known for her work with children who were almost profoundly deaf.
John K. Niparko was an American surgeon, scientist and otolaryngologist who specialized in cochlear implants. Niparko edited and wrote several chapters of Cochlear Implants: Principles & Practices.
Quentin Summerfield is a British psychologist, specialising in hearing. He joined the Medical Research Council Institute of Hearing Research in 1977 and served as its deputy director from 1993 to 2004, before moving on to a chair in psychology at The University of York. He served as head of the Psychology department from 2011 to 2017 and retired in 2018, becoming an emeritus professor. From 2013 to 2018, he was a member of the University of York's Finance & Policy Committee. From 2015 to 2018, he was a member of York University's governing body, the Council.
Dr Sandra Desa Souza is an ENT Head, Neck and Cochlea Implant Surgeon. She is the first Indian Fellow of the American Otological Society. She was awarded the Padma Shri India's fourth-highest civilian award in 2020. She is the first woman surgeon in the world to pioneer the Cochlear implant surgery in India and Asia in 1987. Dr. Souza was one of the first ENT surgeons in the country to perform artificial ear operations, is credited to have given the gift of hearing to thousands of patients.
According to The Deaf Unit Cairo, there are approximately 1.2 million deaf and hard of hearing individuals in Egypt aged five and older. Deafness can be detected in certain cases at birth or throughout childhood in terms of communication delays and detecting language deprivation. The primary language used amongst the deaf population in Egypt is Egyptian Sign Language (ESL) and is widely used throughout the community in many environments such as schools, deaf organizations, etc. This article focuses on the many different aspects of Egyptian life and the impacts it has on the deaf community.
James Graham Farncombe Fraser was an English otolaryngologist. He became known for his research for treatments of profoundly deaf people with cochlear implants.
