The Hindu : New Delhi News : `A sound of future'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Oct 15, 2006
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New Delhi

New Delhi

`A sound of future'

Bindu Shajan Perappadan

NEW DELHI: Having gifted the miracle of speech and sound to a hundred children and adults, the ENT Department of the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences celebrated the occasion here on Saturday. The Institute is the first government hospital in North India to offer the technology to severely hearing-impaired individuals and the first hospital in the region to have implanted cochlear implants on a hundred children and adults.

Families of the patients converged in the city and celebrated "A Sound of Future" where the cochlear implanted children presented a cultural programme to send out a message: "Being deaf does not mean that children cannot hear and speak.''

Speaking about the achievement of the AIIMS' ENT Department, its head, Dr. R. C. Deka, said: "Our hospital has a trained team of ENT surgeons and audiologists and a rehabilitation service that ensures that the patient gets good treatment as well as post-treatment consultancy. This is evident from the fact that we conducted cochlear implants on more than 100 patients and all of them have been successful.''

Cochlear implants are electronic devices that help the deaf to hear. It is a device that bypasses the non-functional inner ear and changes things for the better.

Said AIIMS audiologist and speech therapist Bharti Berry: "Cochlear looks like a snail and houses the delicate neuro-epithelium (cells and hearing nerves). Damage to the cochlea causes deafness that varies in degree depending on the amount of damage. Diseases like meningitis and viral infection cause damage to the cochlea and we can help these patients with cochlear implants.''

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