Abu Dhabi, 21st April 2009 (WAM) - Mafraq hospital has announced the start of a speech rehabilitation program for children with hearing loss. A qualified phoniatrician, Dr. Amr Abdel Salam, has recently joined the hospital for language rehabilitation as well as improving auditory skills in patients suffering from severe hearing loss that showed no benefits from conventional hearing aids and received cochlear implants.
Doctor Mondy Hammad, head of ENT department and the expert of cochlear implant at Mafraq hospital, stated that success of cochlear implant rehabilitation depends widely on several factors. Among them and is considered to be the most important factor is a proper speech rehabilitation program. This has to be done in a professional way. ''In most medical centers in UAE speech rehabilitation programs are done by logopedists and not phoniatricians. We think that such programs especially for cochlear implants patients have to be supervised by a qualified physician (phoniatrician) for better results. Doctor Hammad added that our hospital has begun a successful program for cochlear implant where we succeeded to implant about 15 patients and preparing another 10 patients to receive their cochlear implant during the coming few weeks. The quality of service provided is similar to those in developed countries. In addition, Mafraq hospital is the first hospital in UAE that performs a comprehensive early neonatal hearing screening program. The hospital is also planning for extending its projects to include some other public hospitals in Abu Dhabi such as El Cornish and Rahba hospitals. ''Our program has the advantage of implanting the most reliable and expensive implants. Yet the total cost is cheaper than other hospital and center that providing similar or less reliable implants. Implantation is achieved through a small postauricular incision that measures 3 to 4 cm. But the main advantage of our surgical technique is the way of accessing the inner ear (cochlea), stated Dr. Hammad. ''We use the technique of soft surgery which has the advantage of protecting the residual hearing and preserve auditory sensory cell from being damaged due to electrode insertion. This helps in achieving rapid and better results during postoperative rehabilitation program than do other methods. In addition, preservation of residual hearing can greatly improve the results in case of combined use of hearing aids and cochlear implants in the same ear. Recently, some companies developed an implant system which can stimulate the ear both electrically and acoustically (hybrid implant).Copyright Emirates News Agency (WAM) 2009.
