Baha Attract hearing system uses magnets
By David Bruce, Erie Times-News, Pa. | |
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
A benign tumor caused the 77-year-old Emporium woman to lose all hearing in her right ear. Though her left ear was fine, it was almost impossible at times for Garlock to pick up words someone spoke across a lunch table.
"I would go out to lunch with my girlfriends, and I wouldn't be able to hear them talk at my table," Garlock said during a visit to
As Garlock talked, audiologist
Garlock wears the Baha Attract's sound processor, smaller than a 9-volt battery, behind her right ear. It stays in place with magnets -- one in the processor and another under her skin.
The Baha Attract transforms sounds into vibrations, which are amplified and transferred through a titanium implant in the skull to the cochlea, a snail-shaped tube in the middle ear. The vibrations are converted into nerve impulses that the brain interprets as sound.
"It tricks your brain into thinking you can hear out of both ears," said
The magnet is the newest development in the Baha Attract. It replaces a snap that stuck out of the patient's skull and attached to the device.
Tissue around the snap would get infected in about 20 percent of the cases, Lipman said.
"It wasn't always right away, either," Lipman said. "Sometimes it was two, three years later. I knew of a patient who had an infection 10 years later and had to get (the snap) removed."
Lipman inserts the internal magnet during a 45-minute surgery.
Montgomery, 63, of
"I thought it was just some type of sinus infection," Montgomery said while waiting in the Saint Vincent preoperative area. "I picked up my telephone to make a call, and I didn't hear a dial tone. I thought my phone was dead. It turns out it was my ear."
It will be about two months before Montgomery heals enough from surgery for Bilski to fit her for a Baha system.
Gavlock waited patiently for her fitting. Once the device was programmed and placed behind her ear, Gavlock's eyes grew wide.
"All of the sudden the sound is there," said Gavlock, whose insurance covered the nearly
___
(c)2014 the Erie Times-News (Erie, Pa.)
Visit the Erie Times-News (Erie, Pa.) at www.GoErie.com
Distributed by MCT Information Services
Wordcount: | 528 |
Same-sex couple asks Erie judge to validate marriage
Advisor News
Annuity News
Health/Employee Benefits News
Life Insurance News