Is cochlear implant surgery a minimally invasive operation?

With the development of modern science and technology, some hearing-impaired people can also hear external sounds with the help of machines, such as hearing AIDS and cochlear implants. But recently, it was reported on the Internet that if the cochlear implant is lost, it needs to be re-implanted by craniotomy. The news frightened many people wearing cochlear implants. So, what is a cochlear implant? Cochlear implant is lost, do you really need craniotomy and replantation?

Cochlear implant is an electronic device. The speech processor in vitro converts the sound into an electrical signal with a certain coding form, and the electrode system implanted in the body directly stimulates the auditory nerve to restore or reconstruct the hearing function of the deaf.

Cochlear implant lost, no need for craniotomy and replantation. There are two reasons:

1. Cochlear implant consists of an implant and an external machine. The external machine is usually hung behind the ear, and the internal machine needs to be implanted in the body. But whether you put the implant in the body or take it out of the body for some reason, you don't need to do craniotomy. Dental implant surgery only needs to make a small incision of 2.5cm~3cm behind the ear, then grind a groove on the bone behind the ear, and then put the dental implant into it for fixation. What's more, the loss of cochlear implant is generally the loss of external machine, and it is not necessary to do craniotomy to re-implant.

2. Losing the external device does not mean replacing the internal device. Once the extracorporeal device is lost, you only need to buy another extracorporeal device of the same model and put in a new program suitable for the extracorporeal device. In addition, it should be noted that the cochlear implant program stored in the voice processor is debugged according to the wearer's hearing loss and hearing feeling, which varies greatly from individual to individual, but not every implant can only match a unique voice processor, because the startup and adjustment records of each wearer can be retrieved from the software of the product company, so the wearer will not have to adjust the cochlear implant program from the beginning because of the loss or damage of the voice processor.

Finally, I suggest that if the cochlear implant loses its speech processor, it should contact the manufacturer as soon as possible to negotiate and communicate, and get a temporary replacement machine for short-term use until its own problems are properly solved.

This article was scientifically proofread by Yuan, deputy director of the Department of Otolaryngology, Affiliated Hospital of Capital Medical University.