Why implant so early?

Often the same discussion comes up. Not to implant early but to let the child decide.
That argument is nopt ignored (by parents that decide to operate early), it is overruled by other info from research...
Below a picture from a research -"poster" which is attatched to this topid.


It shows the vast difference between children implanted early and those implanted later....
Sure, this is only one test, but the difference is striking!

So, even though "having the children make their own decision" sounds great, it will put them on the right side of the graph.
So, deciding that the childs has to decide for itself is you deciding that your child will be less effective with CI.

What is sad, Cloggy, people like Sweetmind does not give a fiddle about these facts. Actually I wonder if they can UNDERSTAND these facts at all.

Fuzzy

Audiofuzzy said:

What is sad, Cloggy, people like Sweetmind does not give a fiddle about these facts. Actually I wonder if they can UNDERSTAND these facts at all.

Fuzzy

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I have shown this result a year ago on DeafNote... number of replies...... 1... from ORB who couldn't open the link. Nothing from Sweetmind, CSN or anyone else....

I have more hope here...

Cloggy said:

I have shown this result a year ago on DeafNote... number of replies...... 1... from ORB who couldn't open the link. Nothing from Sweetmind, CSN or anyone else....

I have more hope here...

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Wow. My son is five but he's been wearing hearing aids since 8 months old. Granted he hasn't benefitted much from hearing aids but I'm expecting the same results from him!

Fragmenter said:

Wow. My son is five but he's been wearing hearing aids since 8 months old. Granted he hasn't benefitted much from hearing aids but I'm expecting the same results from him!

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I wouldn't be surprise to see that the hearing he had and the speech he has learned so far will benefit him greatly.

Cloggy, is there a difference in performance between those implanted before one year vs. those implanted post one year? The reason I am not gung-ho for implantation is b/c it is still very difficult to accurately tell how well a baby hears. I've heard of weird situtions where a baby tests as profound on ABR, but tests as more hoh on traditional audiograms. Yes, there are kids who get absolutly no benifit from aids who SHOULD be implanted......but I mean is a few months difference REALLY gonna make a difference?

deafdyke said:

Cloggy, is there a difference in performance between those implanted before one year vs. those implanted post one year? The reason I am not gung-ho for implantation is b/c it is still very difficult to accurately tell how well a baby hears. I've heard of weird situtions where a baby tests as profound on ABR, but tests as more hoh on traditional audiograms. Yes, there are kids who get absolutly no benifit from aids who SHOULD be implanted......but I mean is a few months difference REALLY gonna make a difference?

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I don't think a few months is making a difference, unless the tests are more reliable.
But the hearing test of my daughter she was sedated. The test is purely on the nerve and brainfunction. When haircells are damaged, it will show.

But a child oldre than 1 year would have developed sign (hopefully) and would have lived 1 to 2 years without sound.
Before 1, the child is just starting up the communication and hearing sounds would help it.
So, less time is lost.

Throwing a Wrench Into This

I have been aware of some debate within professional groups ( Oh please is it CE/CS yet again.... yup sorry ), that if hearing parents were able to communicate with the deaf childre quickly and effectively, they may actually wait to decide about CI's.

I certainly feel that it is worth debate

fyi

loml said:

I have been aware of some debate within professional groups ( Oh please is it CE/CS yet again.... yup sorry ), that if hearing parents were able to communicate with the deaf childre quickly and effectively, they may actually wait to decide about CI's.

I certainly feel that it is worth debate

fyi

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With us we are used to being multi-lingual. Dutch, Norwegian, Englis, German.... We considered it and found CI the better option.
Also, Sign is not that easy. Basic signs is fine, but only when you use it continously - not just to your child - it is hard to learn.

But, certainly worth the discussion.

Cloggy said:

With us we are used to being multi-lingual. Dutch, Norwegian, Englis, German.... We considered it and found CI the better option.
Also, Sign is not that easy. Basic signs is fine, but only when you use it continously - not just to your child - it is hard to learn.

But, certainly worth the discussion.

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I agree sign is not easy.... but I am not referring to sign Cloggy, but rather cueing. I am all for mutli-lingual, absolutely! I respect your choice Cloggy.

loml said:

I agree sign is not easy.... but I am not referring to sign Cloggy, but rather cueing. I am all for mutli-lingual, absolutely! I respect your choice Cloggy.

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I know you do, thanks,
but I did want to show that there's a different scenario's.
But cueing, that would include lipreading, speech therapy etc. It wouldn't be easy either.
I like sign. It's a complete language and very beautiful. But for our family it was not practical.
You grew up with cued speech?

Cloggy,

My question is what do you say to those who implanted their children also at the young age show no sign of ability to understand speech, sounds, and background sounds from cochlear implant? How can you be certain that cochlear implants are 100 percent guarantee working device?

I've heard there are warranties on internal parts of the CI, Let's say about five years it stops working, What happens then? Another under the knife situation? Do you believe it is fair for the child to go through all that? Just to gain hearing?

Cheri said:

Cloggy,

My question is what do you say to those who implanted their children also at the young age show no sign of ability to understand speech, sounds, and background sounds from cochlear implant? How can you be certain that cochlear implants are 100 percent guarantee working device?

I've heard there are warranties on internal parts of the CI, Let's say about five years it stops working, What happens then? Another under the knife situation? Do you believe it is fair for the child to go through all that? Just to gain hearing?

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First it's not "Just" to gain hearing. You might think that hearing is really nothing special but I do and a lot of people with me. It means so much, that people are willing to have their child undergo an operation in order to hear sounds. It's not "Just hearing."

We have a positive attitude towards the techmology and believe that it will last very-very long. But your questions are valid. It's just that you are worried about things that happen to some CI-ers. I look at the things that happen to most CI-ers.

To those that show no sign of improvement. They had a opportunity and it didn't work. From that point onwards, other communication has to be learned if they do not know it allready. They are as deaf as they would have been before CI.

If it stops working. Yes, a new one is a good option. And with the joy my daughter has with hearing, I'm sure that she will be OK with the additional operation. Remember, she grows up hearing. Deafness will be a new world for her. Sure, she's deaf when she goes to bed, under the shower, swimming. But the main part of her life she hears.
If anything happened that would exclude her from hearing... then she will be like any other child that lost her hearing after learning to hear and speak. She'll have an advantage in the way that she has heared.
And sure, we will be sad that it didn't work.

Now, let me put a dark side on deafness like you put a dark side on hearing with CI.

Suppose we had decided agains CI. Then one day, say your 5 years, she would have an accident in traffic. Would that be worth it NOT having CI.

I hope she will write to you one day, in English, the fourth language that she will have mastered after Sign, Dutch, Norwegian.
How would that make you feel?

Cheri said:

Cloggy,

My question is what do you say to those who implanted their children also at the young age show no sign of ability to understand speech, sounds, and background sounds from cochlear implant? How can you be certain that cochlear implants are 100 percent guarantee working device?

I've heard there are warranties on internal parts of the CI, Let's say about five years it stops working, What happens then? Another under the knife situation? Do you believe it is fair for the child to go through all that? Just to gain hearing?

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Nothing in life is ever 100%. If we did nothing at all in respect to any device then how sure could we be sure that we won't go blind for example when we are older, which might make signing and using TTY phones alone more difficult? I'm not using this as an argument to get a CI per se but rather as an illustration that no one is free from any sort of risk in life.

At least if a CI device fails (I believe the failure rate is 2-4% from a post that Liebling cited in Sweetmind's thread) something can be done about it fairly quickly. My audiologist also told me that it takes about 9 years for you to lose your auditory memory so that is plenty of time to be reimplanted. It is not major surgery like a caesarean section either.

R2D2 said:

..........It is not major surgery like a caesarean section either.

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Come to think of it... that is an operation that is normally not needed with a lot of risk... And often just in order not to have pain.
Why would a mother risk making her child an orphan, no matter how small the chance...

Sorry.... Off topic

Cheri said:

Cloggy,

My question is what do you say to those who implanted their children also at the young age show no sign of ability to understand speech, sounds, and background sounds from cochlear implant? How can you be certain that cochlear implants are 100 percent guarantee working device?

I've heard there are warranties on internal parts of the CI, Let's say about five years it stops working, What happens then? Another under the knife situation? Do you believe it is fair for the child to go through all that? Just to gain hearing?

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Cheri, during the operation, the internal implant is tested to make it is working and will test the patient to make sure he/she is responding to the implant. That is after the implant is installed.

I'll leave the 2nd part of question to cloggy.

Cloggy said:

Come to think of it... that is an operation that is normally not needed with a lot of risk... And often just in order not to have pain.
Why would a mother risk making her child an orphan, no matter how small the chance...

Sorry.... Off topic

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Well I don't know about in Norway or the US but caesarean births are now 30% of the total births in Australia. I had one for my daughter upon my doctor's recommendation. It probably is unnescessary in a lot of cases but then hindsight is perfect. People here don't even bat an eyelid having this surgery even though it's major compared to a CI surgery and obviously has a higher maternal death rate .

Anyway sorry for making your thread off topic.

Cloggy,

Thank you for taking the time to present the performative results. I have little doubt that early pediatric implantation, prior to the age of 3, increases a child's ability to recognize and identify bisyllablic words, due to the brain's great plasticity at that stage. Are the bisyllablic words based on stress-timed (English, Dutch, German, Russian, etc.), syllable-timed languages (generally Romance and Indian languages) or both? I can conclude, with absolute certainty, that Chinese words were not included in the study, as there are no bisyllablic words, only monosyllablic ones, in Chinese. I also wonder if implanted children of similar backgrounds have the ability to recognize tonal-based words.

That study is a VERY important study and it helps people recognize the benefits of early implantation.

Despite the discouraging results it may seem for late CI users, if you look at the study, it reported that their lipreading improved significantly so it is clear that they can benefit from it.

Do you honestly want to deny a deaf infant an opportunity to hear well with a CI? If he doesn't want it, he can always discontinue it.

netrox said:

Do you honestly want to deny a deaf infant an opportunity to hear well with a CI? If he doesn't want it, he can always discontinue it.

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Yep, that is the question.

My wife and I agreed to make our children depend on their hearing devices until after they finish college then leave it up to them.