NICE guidance
Viewpoints
David Proops
ENT surgeon at Queen Elizabeth Medical Centre Birmingham and Birmingham Children’s Hospital
The NICE guidance is absolutely wonderful news for people – particularly children. It is recognition of the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of cochlear implants, for both parents and children.
This should put an end to the postcode lottery, so that all profoundly deaf people, no matter what age or where they live, should have access to cochlear implantation to restore their hearing.
Britain should be particularly proud that we’re the second nation on earth to agree that all children should be offered simultaneous bilateral implants, and there is little doubt in my mind that in 2011 when the NICE reviews its advice, that all adults will be offered two implants.
What we’re seeing now is an incredible improvement in what we thought was possible when we started 20 years ago, due to more advanced and sophisticated processing strategies in cochlear implants, and quicker, safer and less damaging surgery.
I predict a time when people with fairly moderate to severe – rather than the profound loss, will find that cochlear implants may restore a lot of what has been lost – rather than a conventional hearing aid, which makes the best of what is left.
Hearing loss is a terrible affliction, which separates the sufferer from most human attributes, including the ability to communicate freely. Further progress in the technology offers the prospect of the abolition of deafness forever.
