It’s a big day for Vada Stickland. At just 1 year old, she is hearing sound for the very first time.
She recently had surgery for bilateral cochlear implants, and today doctors are turning them on.
“Today I always say is sound awareness day, we don’t know what they are going to hear, even for an adult patient we don’t know what it is going to be, but we know you are going to hear something, and we have to start building those building blocks,” said Ashley Price, AuD, clinical audiologist.
After Vada was born she didn’t pass her newborn screening tests.
“We did it three consecutive times and she never passed any of her hearing screenings,” said Samantha Stickland, Vada’s mom. “There were so many different tests, per se, at home, being the youngest, it’s a loud house, with the older siblings, there were many instances where usually a baby would wake up and she wouldn’t even flinch.”
Vada tried hearing aids but it was determined she had profound hearing loss. The family eventually met with Dr. Greg DeSautel.
“I saw her at 6 months of age and then we started talking about cochlear implantation as an alternative to sign or just being without hearing. The earliest we typically implant is 9 months of age, at least that’s what the FDA approves, there are some kids implanted at 6 months of age but most kids is about 12-18 months,” said Greg DeSautel, MD, Ear, Nose, and Throat Surgeon, Avera Medical Group.
“I always tell my adult patients that a cochlear implant bypasses how we naturally hear and directly stimulates the auditory nerves so normally we have these little sensory cells that send stimulation to our auditory nerve, but the implant actually takes the place of that,” said Price.
Vada had surgery in March where Dr. DeSautel put in the internal implant device.
“We did bilateral cochlear implantation, typically, kids probably 5-10 years ago were only getting one cochlear implant even if they were born bilaterally deaf, nowadays we almost always do bilateral cochlear implantation at the same setting,” said Dr. DeSautel.
“It was just a quick recovery, just a bandage that she had to wear, and then we watched the incisions afterwards, a couple small guidelines to follow, but it was back to normal life honestly within 24 hours,” said Samantha Stickland.
And now at this appointment, the implants are being hooked up and turned on.
“They will put the speech processor on and that will send the sound or electrical energy to the auditory nerve,” said Dr. DeSautel.
“We get to talk to her for the first time, well we’ve been talking to her but she gets to hear us for the first time today and we’re excited,” said Stickland.
The implants will take some getting used to for Vada, but this is just the beginning to a world full of opportunity.
“The amazing thing about cochlear implantation is a lot of the kids will catch up in terms of their speech. I always say this is a little bit like being born but in six months or a year her language can get to be pretty normal for her age match, so by the time she is 4 or 5 she will have the same language ability as another 4- or 5-year-old that has had normal hearing their whole life, so that’s the amazing thing about cochlear implants,” said Dr. DeSautel.
Dr. DeSautel says he does about one cochlear implant a week. He’s also doing them in adults.
