Should I Wait for Future Cochlear Implant Technology?

1. Better Outcomes

If you are considering a cochlear implant for your child and wish for them to develop spoken communication, getting a cochlear implant as early as possible will give them the best opportunity to do so. Large, population-based, long-term research shows that children who received a cochlear implant before they reached 12 months of age developed significantly better spoken language skills than children who got implanted later.

Early cochlear implantation and early intervention in children with hearing loss have also been linked to the development of language, speech, and reading skills similar to those of children without hearing loss.

For adults, the duration of untreated hearing loss is considered a factor that may predict outcomes with a cochlear implant. The sooner a CI candidate is implanted, the sooner the brain can begin learning to interpret the sounds from the cochlear implant. This can reduce the impact of hearing loss on the quality of life, work, and social relationships.

2. Brain Function

The brain develops, makes new connections, adapts, and changes more readily in the first years of life, allowing children to learn rapidly from their environment. This is referred to as ‘brain plasticity’, and it decreases throughout childhood.

Children must be immersed in language from a young age to learn to understand and use the language spoken around them. Long-standing research shows that there is a sensitive period in which the brain most easily learns language. This period lasts up to approximately 3.5 years of age. The longer a child has to be exposed to language during this period, the better.

Receiving a cochlear implant early makes the most of the brain’s plasticity and the sensitive period for language learning in the early years, giving your child the best chance to develop spoken language.

For older adults, there is evidence that untreated hearing loss leads to an increased risk of cognitive decline, social isolation, depression, and dementia. Encouragingly, recent studies have also shown that the use of a cochlear implant in older adults with severe hearing loss led to an improvement in cognitive function compared to a similar group without cochlear implants.

3. Time / Catching Up

Children without hearing loss are immersed in language from the day they are born. Well, actually, even earlier, as the hearing system develops in the womb at 20 weeks. From day one, children learn to communicate and develop the basic skills needed for more complex communication (such as talking and reading).

Learning to associate sounds with objects, recognizing their caregiver’s voices, and beginning to coo and babble are just a few of the skills babies learn in their first 12 months. Children are like sponges, absorbing and learning new words rapidly in their first years. Home language input has been linked to verbal skills, cognitive ability, and reading skills in children without hearing loss.

The longer a child’s hearing loss goes untreated, the more likely they will develop a larger communication gap between their language skills and those of their peers—one that becomes more and more difficult to close or catch up on. When children do receive a cochlear implant, they must master those basic communication skills before they can learn more complex skills like talking, reading, and writing.

Future Technology and Advancements

With a MED-EL cochlear implant, you don’t need to worry about missing out on future technology. All MED-EL implants from the last 20+ years are compatible with our current CI audio processors. And when we design our new audio processors, we make them fully compatible with all our implants, so you can easily upgrade to the latest technology.

Our cochlear implants are also built with structure preservation in mind. Our super-flexible electrodes help keep the delicate structures of the inner ear intact, which in turn helps preserve residual hearing. This means that you can take advantage of new therapies or future technologies.

Curious about what might be next? Explore some of the innovations shaping the future of cochlear implants, from invisible CIs to robotic surgery.