An experimental ‘hybrid’ device may give many with partial hearing loss the extra boost they need.
By Regina Nuzzo
Special to The Times
Los Angeles Times — Health Section
December 11, 2006
JEANNE YEOMAN had been dealing with her hearing loss for a couple of decades, but listening still exhausted her. And technology wasn’t really helping her patience. She remembers driving down the road one day and coming close to just hurling her hearing aids out the window.
“Hearing aids made everything louder, not clearer,” she says. “I didn’t need amplification. I needed clarification.”
Yeoman wasn’t deaf. So she was surprised to learn she was an ideal candidate for an experimental type of cochlear implant. Unlike hearing aids, cochlear implants communicate directly with the brain by converting sounds into electrical impulses and shooting them along the auditory nerve. Until now these devices have been used only for profoundly deaf people. But this new “hybrid” cochlear implant was designed specifically for partial hearing loss –so that users could enjoy both their own natural hearing plus bionic hearing for sounds where they need an extra boost.
