ABSTRACT
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Auditory prostheses, which function through electrical stimulation of the peripheral auditory nervous system, are the only commercially manufactured sensory-neural prostheses developed to date. Several companies around the world are currently manufacturing FDA-approved auditory prostheses for human use. As of June 1999, over 30,000 multichannel prostheses had been successfully implanted in deaf human patients ranging in age from 12 months to 80-plus years. Patients vary considerably in the amount of auditory information that they can understand using an auditory prosthesis. With the most recently implemented prosthesis designs, many patients can understand speech well enough in a familiar context to carry on a normal conversation without the aid of any visual cues. For the majority of patients, the prostheses provide enough information that normal conversation aided by lipreading is possible. A small number of patients are unable to understand speech even with the aid of lipreading but still find the implants useful for making them aware of their auditory environment: hearing an approaching automobile, hearing the doorbell ring, etc.
