What is a cochlear implant?

The cochlear implant is a kind of electronic device, which is used by the extracorporeal speech processor to convert the sound into a certain coded form of electrical signals, and through the electrode system implanted in the body to directly stimulate the auditory nerves to restore, improve and rebuild the auditory function of the deaf people. In the past twenty years, with the development of high technology, cochlear implants have progressed rapidly from experimental research to clinical application. Nowadays, cochlear implants have been used as a regular treatment for severe to total deafness all over the world. The cochlear implant is the most successful biomedical engineering device in use today.

The cochlear implant, also known as the electronic cochlear implant, is in fact a special kind of acoustic-electrical conversion electronic equipment, belonging to the high-tech electronic medical products. It is generally divided into two parts: in vivo and out-of-vivo, and is mainly used to help profoundly deaf and totally deaf patients to gain hearing, especially those who have been ineffective in wearing conventional hearing aids. The inner machine is surgically placed in the cochlea of the inner ear and the outer machine is fixed to the skull. The external machine converts mechanical sound energy from the surrounding environment into electrical signals, which in turn stimulate the cochlea and auditory nerve to produce hearing. After cochlear implantation, the key is systematic speech rehabilitation training at a later stage.