Partial deafness treatment - Polish achievement

Gradually increasing clinical material consisting of children with preserved residual hearing have been consistently presented on the international forum by the team of the Institute. Owing to the continuous development of our program of surgical approach to the cochlea through its round window we have been able, as the first team in the world, to single out a completely new group of patients with a hearing impairment, who have extant large population of ganglions in the apex of the cochlea, representing normal tonotopy, thus enabling them to hear low frequency sounds, while being unable to hear high sounds - explains Prof. Skarżyński. Such condition of hearing had been named the partial deafness and it is treated using cochlear implants (Partial Deafness Cochlear Implantation - PDCI). Prof. Skarżyński, as the first surgeon in the world, performed a cochlear implantation in an adult patient with partial deafness in 2002. Fully satisfactory results had been presented in autumn that same year at the Hearing Preservation Workshop in Indianapolis. On following conferences of this series he presented very good results of implantation in further groups of patients. Satisfactory results of hearing preservation in over 93% of adult patients motivated the possibility of applying the same treatment to children. First in Poland and in the world child with a partial deafness had been operated by Prof. Skarzyński in the International Center of Hearing and Speech in Kajetany in 2004.  Until present day the homogenous group of patients, children with almost 100% of hearing preservation , is constantly growing. It is the only such group presented in the literature in international congresses. Theoretical rudiments of complementing lost ability of hearing the high frequency sounds with cochlear implants had therefore been confirmed in praxis, proving the possibility of synergy between residual hearing, preserved in different degrees and possibly supplemented by the acoustic stimulation, and electrical hearing.