Hearing from Inside: The Latest on Otologics Prosthesis

To update our readers, The MIT Technology Review has an article on a fully implantable hearing prosthesis from Otologics that we wrote about a year ago.

The device is powered by a battery that is recharged when the user places a small radio transmitter against his or her head for 60 to 90 minutes. The transmitter is held to the skin by a magnet in the implant. An inductive coil in the implant converts the radio energy to electricity and recharges the battery with it. The battery can stay inside the body for at least five years, according to the company, before it needs to be replaced. The implanted components are hermetically sealed together to protect against leaks, so the electronics, microphone, and inductive coil are replaced as well. However, the piston in the middle ear remains in place.
The results of a phase I clinical trial of the hearing aid were reported in the August 2007 issue of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery. Twenty subjects with moderate to severe hearing loss were implanted in one ear. (Seventeen of the subjects had worn conventional hearing aids prior to the study.) The subjects did somewhat worse than with the hearing aid they had previously worn: their ability to hear a range of single-frequency tones dropped between 5 and 12 decibels, and mean word-recognition scores dropped from the low 80 percent range to the high 60 percent range.
On the other hand, a satisfaction survey found that the subjects felt that the device not only improved their hearing, but also sounded more natural than their old hearing aid. The authors of the study speculated that new processing algorithms would improve the test results. Otologics has indicated that it is already working on this.

More from MIT Tech Review…
Otologics homepage…
Flashback: Otologics’ Fully Implantable Hearing Device