Does anyone have experience with a hybrid implant? What was your outcome?
Hi there! When you say hybrid, do you mean a combination of acoustic amplification for low frequencies and cochlear for the rest? If so, then yes, I had this for a while and it worked great for being able to determine musical pitch. I went from cochlear only, to hybrid, then back to cochlear only (because my low frequency hearing disappeared entirely). The hybrid device was a bit more complicated and more fragile than a straight cochlear processor though, although probably no more fragile than a standard BTH hearing aid.
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I have the N7 and wore the EAS attachment for 15 months. My residual was preserved during the operation. Then I lost a couple of chunks to my high frequencies/residual hearing rendering the EAS attachment useless to me. I’m now fully electric and don’t miss the EAS at all.
If your talking about the L24 hybrid array, here I Australia Cochlear don’t use it. Simply because they had far too many failures, and people were needing to be reimplanted with a longer array. .
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We’re you undergoing explantation and reimplantation each time?
I’m not sure if we’re talking about the same thing. Could you please clarify what you mean by “hybrid”?
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If you opt for the Hybrid short array/electrode and it fails, yes you would need to have it removed and reimplanted with a longer array/electrode.
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An implant that uses both electrical and acoustic stimulation. In other words, a combination cochlear implant and hearing aid.
They are using the L24 electrode array for High Frequency SSHL in some areas by some doctors.
I believe the theory with the L24 is that it probably doesn’t disturb the still-intact lower frequency part of the cochlear. I have a standard length implant but my low frequency was preserved. Hence the hybrid electrical/acoustic for a while. Then the low frequency disappeared for a reason nobody knows, so went full electrical. Lost ability to discriminate pitch accurately, but the device is so much easier to manage now. No, didn’t get anything reimplanted as I already had standard length implant.
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