Study of Implant Failures for Children

The failure rate of cochlear implants given to children is low. That's the finding of a study detailed this month's issue of Archives of Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery. Researcher at the the University of Toronto took a look at the medical history of 738 children who were provided 971 devices. 34 had to undergo corrective surgery with a reimplantation rate of about three percent. The average time of failure was about 5 years after the surgery. A fifth of the children who had implant failure also had meningitis before the initial implantation. One of the study authors has a financial interest in Cochlear Americas. Read more here.