Laney was bilaterally implanted on 12/5/2006 after a lengthy battle with our insurance company. Thanks to the Let Them Hear Foundation http://www.letthemhear.org ) for winning our battle with the insurance company. Everything went well with the surgery and Laney is learning to listen with the new implant.
Update 05.08.07 It has almost been six months since Laney second implant was activated and we are astounded. We had no idea of what to expect, but it seems incredible. Laney can now take off her old implant and have a conversation with only the new implant. It does need to be a quiet setting, but her progress is great. We have no regrets about our decision for the second implant for Laney. Just the other day we had a problem with the old implant (only needed to be re-programmed) but it sure was a comfort knowing that Laney had the second implant. Listen to the new audio clip of Laney talking about her second implant.
Laney's 2nd Surgery Pictures
We did not take the decision lightly for Laney to be bilaterally implanted. We did not immediately want bilateral implants because it was the popular thing. We wanted to make the best choice possible for Laney's future. Below is a table of the Pros and Cons that we used to make our decision. Although these are not all the pros and cons, these were the most important for us.
Pros Cons
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Backup device in case of failure. We have not went through a failure but we will at some point. I have heard of some failures taking a month to get re-implanted and that does not account for the adjustment period for the reimplanted ear. With Laney going into second grade we can not afford to have her "off the air" for any extending amount of time.
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Increased risk of meningitis. Currently the risk are 1 in 300 every year. Bilateral implants doubles your risk.
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Nerve Fiber Atrophy When we fully understood this topic our decision was made quite simple. We always heard the argument that you should think about saving an ear for future advances. The truth is that the when the nerve fibers are left unstimulated they lose their effectiveness. Although the cochlea could be left intact for future advances the nerve fibers that carry the signals to the brain will lose its ability over time. So the only way to participate in future advances is to implant the ear and keep the nerve fibers vibrant. Dr. Todd told us "You use it or you lose it".
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Exclusion from future technology such as hair cell regeneration. This was a big reservation for me. Experts throw around figures that hair cell regeneration will be available in 10-20 years. That seems like a long time, but Laney would still have over half of her expected life left. If she could live over half her life without an implant on one side that would be huge. She could hear her small child cry in the middle of the night and go swimming with her kids and hear them in the water. These things made me want to hedge our bet and leave the one ear for the future. But once I understood nerve fiber atrophy I was convinced.
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Increased localization |
Increased expense...batteries, wires, etc. Although you can not put a price on better hearing, this is a real consideration. |
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Better discrimination in noisy environments. Research is showing a 30% improvement in environments with background noise.
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Increase in surgery expectations in the future. You now have two devices that can go bad. |
| Increased music enjoyment. A lot of bilateral adults say their enjoyment of music is so much better after being bilateral. |