BELAGAVI
Children in the Belagavi and Goa regions with inborn deafness have newfound hope, as KLES Dr Prabhakar Kore Hospital and MRC, Belagavi, are performing free cochlear implant surgeries.
It is the first private hospital in North Karnataka and the Goa region to be empanelled for this surgery. Children under six years of age born with severe to profound deafness benefit from this surgery.
The hospital has successfully performed 16 such surgeries under this scheme at no cost, and the recipients are undergoing free auditory verbal therapy.
A cochlear implant is an auditory device where the outer part of the device is placed externally on the skull bone behind the ear, while an inner part with an electrode array is surgically inserted inside the inner ear (cochlear) to provide lifelong stimulation of the auditory nerve.
Providing details, Medical Director Dr (Col) Dayananda said the surgery is a boon to thousands of children.
“The Karnataka government, along with the National Programme for Control and Prevention of Deafness under Suvarna Arogya Suraksha Trust (SAST), enables children as young as 10 months of age to undergo this surgery,” Col Dayanand said.
He added that the hospital can also collaborate with the Goa government for these surgeries, as they would cost around Rs 6 lakh without the scheme.
Dr Rajendra Metgudmath said hearing loss or deafness is a silent debilitating disease affecting 466 million people worldwide and 63 million in India. It is common in children, affecting 1 in 5 under 18 years of age.
“If not diagnosed early, it goes unnoticed until 2“5 years of age. Four out of every 1,000 children born are found to have severe to profound hearing loss,” he said.
Cochlear implant surgeon Dr Preeti Hajare, who performed the surgeries, said that in children, the causes can be congenital maternal infections or other acquired causes.
“Consanguineous marriage also plays a significant role in congenital hearing loss.”
“For a child to develop good speech and language, hearing perception with auditory stimulus is very important. Auditory connections are formed in the first two years of age when brain development is maximum and later decreases, finally becoming very minimal after six years of age,” said Dr Hajare.
“The lack of auditory or sound stimuli during this period results in deficits in auditory pathways, with the child displaying hearing impairment and poor or no speech and language development.”
In children with profound hearing loss, strong hearing aids will only amplify the sound up to a particular level without speech perception.
“Cochlear implant surgery will have the best results if performed at an early age. A child’s brain development is maximum until the age of 5 to 7 years. Children can achieve near-normal speech and language development provided their deafness is detected early after onset and implantation is performed quickly thereafter,” Dr Hajare added.
