Woman Gets Hearing Back Just in Time for Christmas – Monday, December 19, 2011
(Lafayette, LA) December 19, 2011 – After years of reading lips to understand conversations local woman, Shelly Cormier, is given the gift of hearing just in time for Christmas. Cormier recently underwent a procedure to receive a Baha hearing implant at Lafayette Surgical Specialty Hospital.
“I can hear noises now that I didn’t even know existed and that most people take for granted like the sound of tearing a wrapper off of a drinking straw,†said Cormier.
Cormier has had single-sided deafness since she can remember. She has worn hearing aids but always had problems with excessive feedback and discomfort. When Dr. C.B. Alldredge, a local ENT, tested the Baha Sound Processor on Cormier, she cried because she could actually hear clearly without reading lips. She knew from that moment that she needed to have the procedure to improve her quality of life. With the help of Dr. Alldredge, Cormier was able to schedule her procedure shortly after her trial, it was the first procedure of its kind ever performed between Baton Rouge, Shreveport, & Houston.
The Baha System utilizes your body’s natural ability to conduct sound. Bone, like air, can conduct sound vibrations. For people with hearing loss, this provides another pathway to perceive sound. Typical hearing aids rely on air conduction and a functioning middle ear.
In cases where the middle ear function is blocked, damaged or occluded, the Baha system may be a better option as it bypasses the outer and middle ear altogether. Instead, sound is sent around the damaged or problematic area, naturally stimulating the cochlea through bone conduction.
When someone has lost most of the hearing in one ear, but has normal hearing on the other side, the Baha system works to reroute sound to the better ear. It uses our body’s natural ability to conduct sound through bone to deliver the signal to the better hearing ear.
Once the cochlea receives these sound vibrations, the organ ‘hears’ in the same manner as through air conduction; the sound is converted into neural signals and is transferred to the brain, allowing a Baha recipient to perceive sound.
Source: http://products.cochlearamericas.com/baha/introduction-to-baha
