Cochlear implants

Cochlear implants have become a realistic alternative for the management of profoundly deaf patients. The last two decades have seen major advances in this field. Implants are now used by severely to profoundly deaf adults and children in almost every phase of daily life. They have become an established treatment, and today's expectations for all aspects of the cochlear implant system are much greater than they were for the experimental devices of the early 1980s. Hardware designs have improved to meet clinical and research demands, technological developments have made the devices smaller and more reliable, and speech-processing research has yielded a series of improvements in patient benefit.