Focusing on You: Auditory Brainstem Implant at UHealth

Restoring hearing for those without auditory nerve function

A multidisciplinary team of otolaryngology and neurosurgery specialists at the UHealth, the University of Miami Health System has introduced an auditory brainstem implant (ABI) program — one of just a handful in the U.S. — that uses signals to bring back sound for people without auditory nerve function.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Narrator: Focusing on you, innovations in modern medicine, from your team of experts at UHealth, the University of Miami Health System.

Pam Giganti: UHealth is one of just a handful of institutions in the country with an auditory brainstem implant program helping the once death hear again. Electronic signals create sounds for people without auditory nerve function.

Fred Telischi: For many deaf patients, we can use a device called a cochlear implant. But these patients with NF2 don’t have a functioning hearing nerve.

Pam Giganti: UHealth doctors performed the first auditory brainstem transplant in Florida at Jackson Memorial Hospital. The implant places electrodes on the brainstem, converting sounds to electric signals.

Christine Dinh: Once we have that in, then I have my team of audiologists and electrophysiologists that then stimulate each electrode one by one to see which ones would work.

Pam Giganti: The team’s audiologist communicated with the patient in Spanish. They obtained hearing responses on a majority of the device’s 21 contact electrodes.

Michael E. Ivan: You could just see her face and the emotion that she felt when she was able to hear something for the first time.

Jacques J. Morcos: 10 specialists under one roof that intersect over the disease of a given patient, this is personalized medicine at its best.

Tags: audiology