Michigan Ear Institute's coochlear implant program began in 1984 and implanted the first recipient in Michigan.

Currently there are over 300 recipients of the cochler implant The MEI team consists of 9 surgeons and 4 audiologists. We have implanted children and adults, our youngest recipient at 12 months old and our oldest recipient 90 years old.

A cochlear implant is a surgically implanted electrode with a small complex behind the ear called a speech processor. It is designed to help patients with severe to profound hearing loss who no longer benifit from conventional hearing aids.

An implant has the following parts:

1) A microphone, which picks up sound from the environment.

2) A speech processor, which selects and arranges sounds picked up by the microphone.

a transmitter and receiver/stimulator, which receive signals from speech processor and convert them into electric impulses.

3) A transmitter and receiver/stimulator, which receives a signal from the speech processor

and convert these into an electric impulse.

4) An electrode array, which is a group of electrodes that collects the impulses from the

stimulator and sends them to different regions of the auditory nerve.

An implant does nmot restore normal hearing. Instead it can give a deaf person a useful representation of sounds in the environment and help him/her to understand speech. Performance with implant varies from person to person however, a majority of implant patients receive an improved quality of life and an increase in their ability to understand speech.