A cochlear implant surgery was performed on an eight-month-old baby, who was born with a hearing defect in both ears. The baby was diagnosed with zero hearing ability at birth in both his ears. The baby is a resident of New Delhi, Punjabi Bagh area, who was brought for treatment to Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, Delhi. It is crucial to treat children born with hearing loss as early as possible, or they have a high risk of not developing normal language and speech skills, as they are unable to hear a point of reference.

Initially, hearing aids were fitted on the baby to help the problem, as per international protocol. However, further diagnosis by the doctors confirmed that the child wouldn’t be able to hear, with the mere use of hearing aids, and his family was advised to consider cochlear implants.

The patient’s young age presented a major challenge for the surgery. However, the doctors, decided to move ahead with it after taking the consent of the parents.

“When dealing with hearing loss in children of such a young age, the most important part is to restore the hearing of the child as early as possible. In the child’s case the treatment of choice for good hearing restoration was cochlear implant, and on top of that, it was important to restore hearing in both his ears (bilateral simultaneous cochlear implant), which means that implantation was done in both ears at the same time,” said the Senior Consultant of ENT Department & Cochlear Implant Surgeon, Dr Ameet Kishore, at Apollo Indraprastha Hospital.

He further added that “It requires extensive surgical expertise and efficiency to safely handle a small eight months old baby weighing just 10 kg, which is why many people would hesitate to do this surgery on such a little baby.”

Source: https://goo.gl/K8CRx5