Children get them free unlimited but there is funding for 86 cochlear implant for over 18 year olds per year. For adults there is a waiting list and those who have the highest priority get them first eg adults who used to be very involved in community but cannot anymore, young adults. Lots of older people get CI’s in NZ. The waiting list however is about 500 people.
Update 23 June 2021: The Gauteng Provincial government has since released a statement saying medical tests show that Gosiame Sithole had not given birth recently, and nor had she been pregnant.
highly unlikely story
Joan, thanks for the reply. I have an appointment with a ENT in August. The practice does a lot of work with implants and I was assured that the doctor will consider all options. Thanks for your input. It certainly gave a lot of information to chew on until my appointment. Again, many thanks. Karl
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Hello all. I had an evaluation at our local university audiology department. I have a profound sensorineural loss in my left ear since about 5years old (68 now). Right ear is starting to slip. The audiologist said I qualified for a CI for the left ear. When I went to see the surgeon I was told Medicare would not cover it due to how the length of the loss. Tried bicros HA. Doing not seem to make a difference.
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That is unfortunate. How long ago did you get that response on Medicare coverage. Others here can chime in, but that doesn’t sound right. They updated their guidelines in 2022, but I ano certain what that involved beyond making it easier to qualify.
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I sure don’t remember reading anything about how long you have had your hearing loss being a criteria to dismiss CI. Many surgeons will tell you it won’t work when we do know it has worked for many with long term hearing loss. This just might be a surgeons opinion???
Have you contacted one or all three of the cochlear implant companies? I do know that Cochlear American has staff that will fight for you to get CI coverage and I bet AB and MedEl do too.
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I agree- doesn’t sound right. For sure all three brands have reps who will work with insurance. Very helpful!!
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Hello joanhawsey
My hearing is worse compared with yours before your implant. Cochlear implants have been discussed and the option for me has been on hold for several years. I see that your word discrimination % bilaterally has about doubled that is awesome and I’m sure your speech clarity has greatly improved . I’m so happy for your success. Now to address your question the reason I am reluctant to go CI is my fear that I will not be able to clearly hear music. It may seem strange but that is extremely important to me. How are you feeling about hearing music?
Tony
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Rick this is the exact reason why my CI surgeon wouldn’t do my Left ear. My L ear is congenital, surgeon point blank said he can’t do my L ear as it’s congenital. He couldn’t tell me if I’d even get a 50% response from getting a L ear CI. This is the reason why I haven’t gone bilateral, even though I surely need to. I had been profoundly deaf far to long for my surgeon to risk doing my L ear.
@joanhawsey here in Australia CI clinics are like hens teeth. In Melbourne a capital city of over 5 million people we had 3 clinics that deal with CI’s. 1 acute care the E&E hospital and 2 clinics that do the annual checks for Cochlear.
Since sometime in 2023 Next Sense have opened about 6 clinic to deal with CI’s. CI audiologists aren’t very prevalent in Australia. So many HA clinics (5 yrs ago) don’t know the procedure to be referred on. I had to fight with my aud, because she didn’t want to feel she failed me.
AB 5 years ago I had to travel interstate if I wanted to get AB. The cost then was extremely expensive for me to go ahead with AB.
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That is a tricky issue, and I completely understand the fear of losing the joy of music. In my case, with the Link HA on my “good ear” I have a good experience with music. While listening through the CI only, I do miss a bit of the melody and flavor of the music. Although it doesn’t sound “bad”, just less colorful. I have not done intense music rehab, but do listen with both ears to bluetooth streamed music, mostly classical, and pull my HA out for a while, listen then put it back in and see what I can train my CI to pick up. Piano lessons are said to help with music rehab. I did play around on my daughters piano and was able to feel some improvement in discerning the highest notes with just my CI after doing some ear work. Music is very individual for CI users, and one person’s experience won’t necessarily be the same as the next person’s. That said, there are many on the Advanced Bionics User Facebook group who have had good results. I do wonder what you are really getting from music currently given your degree of loss. Familiar music often sounds better. The field of CI is changing rapidly, so if it has been a while since you talked with your hearing care team, it might be worth another conversation. Also talking with reps from each of the CI brands - they will gladly zoom with you.
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This still has me puzzled - If you have time and are still interested in the CI option, you could seek another opinion and also reach out to the CI brand reps and pose your data. I was told “too early” by my ENT and AuD and glad I kept looking around for input from those with more recent and higher level CI experience. I don’t like to hear “no” unless confirmed - it’s too easy an answer.
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I am curious. Does a hearing aid give you any speech at all with this ear? My thoughts are if that ear does function a CI just might work for you. Have you had a CI evaluation?
@Deaf_piper Sheryl, I totally understand your point and agree to most degrees but we have read about success stories of CI helping with some who lost most of their hearing for many years. It usually took a lot of rehabilitation but helped with speech and localization. The surgeon wants to have a successful surgery, no failures.
This is very much a part of why many get nervous about CI. For the most part CI is very successful. There are circumstances that lower the success rate of CI. These issues put surgeons on the alert and don’t want to take the chance of failure even when it could help the patient. Many who are on the fence about CI are very aware of these failures and it makes them sceptical about getting CI.
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Thank you for sharing your experience. A while ago I did some research. Med-El products were listed as compatible with Oticon however I’m not certain they are available locally or if insurance would help out of network if not. My last four pairs of hearing aids were from Oticon and I currently use Real 1 bilaterally with 105dB acrylic c shells. I have both unvented and pinhole vented versions. Speech clarity is greater and music streaming somewhat less so with the vented ones and not surprisingly the opposite with the unvented….any type of music sounds excellent. Either way I still struggle with speech clarity even in quiet environments. Bilateral CI would likely be the best option for me.
A microbiologist once told me that there is likely a natural cure for most things, if we can find it.
One lady at my ENT giving me a hearing test mentioned that when men especially get older one of the first things they loose is their high frequency hearing.
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Huh. I lost my hearing before my first flu shot. Strange. Its almost as if the flu shot has nothing to do with it?
It all depends on your hearing loss. I am a veteran and get my aids from the VA. I have talked to my audiologist about all options. My hearing loss isn’t bad enough for CI yet and hopefully never will be. It also seems to depend on of your hearing loss is service rated or not. My loss is service rated and i am rated as 50% disabled on my hearing loss alone. I was really beginning to wonder if i was able going to be able to understand speech. But my present audiologist at the VA clinic has gone well over the normal to get my speech understanding for me. I have been seeing him since November 2018, i have been given 4 sets of aids in that amount of time and will be gemy fifth set in late June. I went through 18 months of almost monthly appointments to find a fitting that works for me just to have 75% word recognition while wearing aids. With my primary aids now i am at 80% word recognition in quiet one on one conversations. I can survive in noisy environments much better than anytime in the past but still not great. I have been given therapy to help me understand words. I have found that reading along with audiobooks is a real help.
I’m glad a CI was the right choice for you. But I’m not willing to take the risk of surgery, not to mention all the appointments and tests and rehab, which I avoid if at all possible, just to see if it’s an improvement, which isn’t guaranteed.
That makes no logical sense. You’re free to believe that flu shots can never have serious adverse effects, but that doesn’t negate my lived experience, or the experience of the people represented in the VAERS database.
I think you’ll find the satisfaction percentage of CI users is probably 90%+. That’s not a guarantee, but it’s darn close
Your personal reasons are yours and yours only. But because improvement isn’t “guaranteed” shouldn’t be a reason.
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The flu shot is generally safe, if you don’t have an egg allergy. Why does your doctor think it was the flu shot that caused your hearing loss?
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