There are circumstances where a cochlear implant is helpful but unfortunately not funded by the NHS, such as Single Sided Deafness or Bilateral Implantation in Adults.
Bilateral Implantation in Adults
It is natural to listen with two ears, and the information from each ear provides a three-dimensional representation of the sound world. Hearing sound in both ears (bilateral hearing) can help you know where the person is that is talking to you, or from which direction a vehicle is approaching (spatial hearing). Restoring bilateral hearing with a hearing aid or cochlear implant can also improve understanding of speech in noisy environments, and for many with hearing loss, this can help considerably in work and social life.
The National Health Service (NHS) provides patients with severe-to-profound hearing loss with one cochlear implant, unless they are under 18 years old or registered blind, in which case they are eligible for two.
If considering bilateral cochlear implants, they can be inserted during the same operation, which is routine for children in the UK. Alternatively, some people have a second cochlear implant inserted after living with a single implant for a while.
Private cochlear implants can provide the profoundly deaf with either simultaneous bilateral hearing restoration or staged additional benefit over NHS single-side implantation.
Single-sided deafness
Single-sided deafness is the complete loss of hearing in one ear, which often occurs suddenly and results in a reduced ability to understand speech when multiple people are speaking or in background noise. There is also a loss of the ability to determine the direction from which the sound is coming. This can affect quality of life in terms of work, education, and, importantly, psychological and social well-being.
While some patients choose to have no intervention, treatments for single sided deafness include contralateral routing of sound (CROS) hearing aids, where a hearing aid on the deaf side gathers the sound and sends the signal wirelessly to a hearing aid receiver in the good ear, or a bone conduction hearing implant (BCHI), where the sound is sent by vibrations through the skull from the deaf side to the good ear.
Cochlear implants are the only option that can allow the deaf ear to hear again and potentially restore the ability to use both ears together to hear better in noise, and to determine the direction of sound.
There is growing evidence from clinical trials that cochlear implants result in greater improvements in quality of life than CROS or BCHIs in both adults and children. Although cochlear implants for single-sided deafness are routinely available in other European countries and North America, they are not currently available through the NHS. At Cambridge Hearing and Balance, we are pleased to offer you the option of a cochlear implant for single-sided deafness as a private patient to restore hearing in your deaf ear.
