A groundbreaking procedure usually reserved for adults is now being performed on severely hearing-impaired children. In this Healthy Living report, Time Warner Cable News’ Kristen Shaughnessy explains what goes into the operation.
Last time, I told you the story of Olga and Georgy Matsukatov and their two year old son Nikos who was born profoundly deaf. Hearing aids and even cochlear implants did not work.
"It's super hard, your heart breaks every day," Olga says.
The final hope is an auditory brainstem implant, or ABI, a procedure approved by the FDA for only older patients. However, Nikos was approved for an ABI as part of clinical trial at NYU Langone Medical Center.
The procedure requires a complicated surgery and a big team of doctors.
"We place the paddle in the appropriate location through the back of the skull here, we make a little opening about the size of my thumbnail and we put the device in the right place and then we activate it in the operating room and we do recordings - they're called electrical auditory brain stem responses,” explains Dr. Thomas Roland Jr., chairman of the Otolaryngology Department at NYU Langone. “So we stimulate it and we look, try to measure brain waves. If that's present, that at least is a good sign that there is at least a pathway, that the signals getting there, and also we're in the right place."
Although they know the results for ABI are not as good as they would be if cochlear implants worked, for Olga and Georgy, ABI means there is still some hope.
"When they did the surgery and Dr. Roland came out and he said everything went great and everything was, everything went great,” Georgy says “And everything went in place for the first time they put it in. Because the placement should be precise. We're talking about like millimeters, like a little bit left, little bit right and you're not good. But they put it in place and all three of them were like 'Wow, this is amazing' and 'Wow, this is nice.'"
Weeks later, doctors did a sedated activation to make sure that other nerves, like those that regulate things like Nikos vocal cords and blood pressure, were not thrown off when the ABI is activated.
"He had a really nice stimulation today so we're hopeful in a few weeks when he comes in and goes live, we'll get some meaningful auditory information and then begin to use that information,” Dr. Roland says.
In the next up Healthy Report, the live activation. Find out whether Nikos will respond to any of the electrodes that might help him hear.