A New Technology That May Help You Understand Speech

I found this article and it offers some hope to people like me who don’t understand speech very well.

It was in NewsOK.com. http://newsok.com/new-treatments-help-seniors-live-longer/article/5357438

Here is the part about the new technology.

For many seniors, hearing loss is a serious health difficulty. The cochlear nucleus hybrid implant system is considered a groundbreaking advancement that will change the way hearing loss is treated by expanding the scope of hearing technology, said Sandra Over, an Integris audiologist.

The cochlear hybrid is a combination of the cochlear implant and a hearing aid.

“It will enable us to help hearing-impaired individuals who are struggling significantly even with the best of hearing instruments and who previously didn’t qualify for a cochlear implant,” Over said.

An entire population of patients “currently lives their day-to-day lives struggling to hear with and without hearing aids. Many of those patients get some benefit from low-frequency amplification, but struggle to hear sounds of nature, understand their grandchildren, and simply avoid noisy environments where speech can be difficult to understand,” Over said.

“This new system gives these patients a new and highly effective treatment option.”

The nucleus hybrid system includes the nucleus hybrid L24 implant and the cochlear nucleus 6 sound processor with cochlear hybrid hearing.

“This system is designed to effectively restore access to high frequencies, resulting in a speech-understanding improvement two times greater than with a hearing aid alone,” Over said.

Only cochlear can provide the option to stimulate low-frequency hearing and simultaneously restore access to the high frequencies through electric stimulation.

“This is because hybrid hearing is built into every cochlear nucleus 6 sound processor and can be accessed by attaching the hybrid-hearing-acoustic component,” Over said

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