In what may turn out to be a major breakthrough for those suffering from malformed ears or complete deafness by birth, a rare surgery called Bone Anchored Hearing Aid (BAHA) was done on a girl of nine years at the KIMS Hospital in Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala.

This is the second time that a hospital in Kerala performing this type of surgical implantable system for treatment of hearing loss, after its introduction in the country, said Dr K G Mathew, the Cochlear Implant surgeon of the ENT department of the hospital.

The doctor said the girl who has undergone the surgery had no external ears when she was born. She, Anagha, who has become a danseuse by now, is able to hear and recognize the sound and can dance to the tune by paying attention to the music.

"Besides the deformity, the girl had no ear canal, no ear drums and no ear ossicles. Only the inner ear and hearing nerves were present. She could communicate with others by way of sign language and responded to others' lip movements," the doctor averred.

While interacting with Pharmabiz, Dr KG Mathew said, the Bone Anchored Hearing Aid surgery is a surgically implantable system for treatment of hearing loss that works through direct bone conduction. BAHA is used to help people with chronic ear infections, congenital external auditory canal atresia and single sided deafness and those who cannot benefit from conventional hearing aids.

The system is surgically implanted and allows sound to be conducted through the bone rather than via the middle ear, a process known as direct bone conduction.

Regarding BAHA, he said it consisted of three parts, a titanium implant, an external abutment, and a sound processor. The system works by enhancing natural bone transmission as a pathway for sound to travel to the inner ear, bypassing the external auditory canal and middle ear. The titanium implant is placed during a short surgical procedure and over time naturally integrates with the skull bone.

In the operation held in the hospital, a 'titanium implant' was fixed on the skull behind the ear of the girl. This titanium implant when attached to the processor has helped her to recognize the sound and the child became susceptible to normal hearing.

Patients who benefit from this surgery are the ones with deformed or no external ears, those who have long standing ear infection causing destruction of ear drum and ear bone, or ossicles and those patients with one-sided deafness, he told Pharmabiz.

The ENT surgeon further added that another advanced technology that was useful in patients with hearing disability was Cochlear Implant Surgery. This is normally done for those who cannot hear because of damaged Cochlea (inner ear). This advanced surgery is also being carried out in KIMS Hospital for the last four years. According to him, these sophisticated surgical procedures helpful of improving hearing ability are available only in a few hospitals in the country.