Medical Team Performs Auditory Brainstem Implant on Toddler

A Los Angeles team of scientists and surgeons from Keck Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC), Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) and Huntington Medical Research Institutes (HMRI) reported that sound registered in the brain of a deaf Canadian boy for the first time after doctors activated a hearing device that had been surgically implanted in his brainstem. The child is the first in the U.S. to undergo an auditory brainstem implant (ABI) surgery in an FDA approved trial. The study’s goal is to establish safety and efficacy protocols for the surgery and subsequent behavioral mapping procedures that doctors in the U.S. can later utilize once the surgery is approved. The child’s parents watched as audiologists activated the device implanted in their child’s brainstem, and saw him lift his head indicating he heard sound after tiny pulses of electric currents were delivered to the electrodes in his brain. To read more about this study, click here.