Cochlear Americas announced today the arrival of their newest products for the Nucleus BTE system for babies: The Nucleus Babyworn.
View Babyworn Product Description
Is this going to be the end of the Nucleus BodyWorn System, or will parents still prefer the Bodyworn over the BTE for young children?
Cochlear Corp. recently sent out a survey to its users and volunteers with a host of questions relating to their products and services. This is a wonderful opportunity to make your feelings heard on topics ranging from their cochlear implant speech processors, accessories, online shopping, overall cochlear implant support, troubleshooting, and anything of interest to you as a cochlear implant parent or user.
Since they do not have everyone’s contact information, it would do them and you a great service to take part in this important survey. Here is the message we received:
Cochlear Americas is focused on identifying ways we can help improve our
relationship with members of our recipient family. We've made a lifetime
commitment to be your hearing health partner, so we want to know how you
feel about your experiences with Cochlear. In an effort to capture your
opinions, we've prepared a brief survey. We greatly appreciate your
participation.
Thank you! Cochlear Americas
There are various statistics that state the birth rate of hearing impaired to normal hearing children is around 3 of every 1,000 births, with one of those 3 profoundly deaf, or about 1/10 of 1% of the general population.
When doing research for our T-Shirt business, we made a startling discovery. If the numbers above are true, it would mean that approximately 33 children a day born in the U.S. are profoundly deaf. This would indicate approximately 20,000 children a year are born in the U.S. that are profoundly deaf!
When you add up all the numbers, there should be a lot more implant surgeries being performed. However, sadly, only 10-15% of all candidates ever receive a cochlear implant.
This is reflected in the WordTracker Query that I recently performed. Doing research on the words “infant hearing loss”, resulted in only 10 searches per day, with that being the most searched term of all related keywords!
The fact is that there are so many deaf born children every day in the U.S. but so little is being done for them.
It is a well advised message that parents of young children with cochlear implants should take heed – especially for the summer. DO NOT let your child slide down a plastic slide with their implant on their head. The static electricity caused by sliding down will zap the program out of the processor. You will have to go back to your implant center to have the processor reprogrammed.
However, the newer implants seem to be able to withstand minor static electricity, such as walking with your socks on a carpeted floor with the heat on. But sliding down a large slide in the summer will probably be enough to zap the program.
Remind your child to remove the coils from their head just before sliding down. Your child will likely not want to cooperate, as it takes a lot of the fun away.
This once happened to us and we had to get the processor reprogrammed. However, if it is far away and you don’t want to have to bring your child in, you can FedEx it to them and they will reinstall the most recent map without actually having to test your child. If your child is due a new mapping soon, it is probably wise to do the mapping now.
This “minor” inconvenience is another one of those “reminders” that your child actually is deaf!
This one is easy to figure out!
The myth originates from just about anyone seeing a cochlear implant on a user’s head for the first time. Immediately, the assumption is that the coil and the wires leading up to it are transferring signals directly into the brain.
Of course, the cochlear implant (both the internal or external components) itself is not attached at all to the brain, as is illustrated in this drawing from the National Institute of Health. However, come to think about it, ordinary hearing is actually accomplished by “wires” (nerves) transferring “signals” (physioelectrical impulses) to the brain.
So it turns out that cochlear implants aren’t much different after all.
Cochlear Implant Myths – Learn the true facts and how to properly educate people about them
When Cochlear Implants first became available, there was this widespread belief that a “cure for deafness” has been found. The myth that is still very popular to this day, is that once a person receives an implant, they are no longer deaf.
A warning posted on the National Association for the Deaf website warns that “cochlear implants are not a cure for deafness.”
Of course, parents of children with cochlear implants know very well that even with a cochlear implant, their child is still very much deaf. Swimming, bathing, school, and even conversations in noisy places are all still very challenging for them. Cochlear implants do provide a tremendous opportunity for the deaf to communicate with general society, and it is only with lots of hard work, patience, and perseverance that they are able to do so.
Did you know that you can receive free insurance support if you are having difficulty getting coverage for a cochlear implant?
Cochlear Americas has available a service to provide insurance support for prospective cochlear implant candidates for any company’s CI and Baha devices, at no charge. That means, that even if you are considering an Advanced Bionics or a Med-El cochlear implant, you can still request their assistance with receiving coverage from your insurance company.
As noted in a previous post, many people are having a hard time getting approval for coverage of a bilateral implant. Although many insurance companies are allowing them, there are still a few that can give a hard time.
This service provided by Cochlear Corp., will deal with the insurance company directly to secure coverage of the bilateral implant if it is recommended by your audiologist. Their specialists are trained in dealing with insurance company procedures and bureaucracies, and can get approval a lot faster and easier than you can on your own.
To contact Cochlear’s Insurance Support Team (OHS), call (800) 633-4667.
Many naysayers really believe that to actually take a deaf person and implant him/her with a device that enables them to hear is just too wacky to believe…………and therefore it must be experimental.
This myth may just come from the fact that it may seem too good to be true, and people would compare it to wrinkle and hair loss treatments. But fact of the matter is, the implant has been FDA approved in children since 1990! Many other medical devices are around for a lot less than that and are already well-accepted into society.
It is because of myths like these and others that the rate of cochlear implantation in the U.S. is so low relative to the deaf population.
Michael Moore’s latest film released this past weekend has already caused quite a stir in the movie critic world. 
Sicko achieved a # 9 spot this weekend even with low coverage. Although most of the reviews were somewhat positive, there seemed to be something noticeably absent from the reviews that we’ve seen so far.
Prominent in the film was the story of a young child who was originally denied coverage for a second cochlear implant, as described in a previous post. We were hoping to see some heavy media coverage about the cochlear implant and its benefits, thereby increasing its awareness to the public. Most implant recipients and their families hate the blank stare they get when they tell people that they have a cochlear implant. It would be nice if this film would expose the world at large to the wonders we experience with them.
However, this does not seem to be the case. None of the reviews I’ve seen so far mention the cochlear implant even with relation to the film, and it appears that most viewers will not come away any more knowledgeable about the implant than before.
