Loud joy after 16 years of deafness

The surgery on Baraa was performed by Dr Ahmed Al Amadi, consultant and head of the ear, nose and throat department at Al Baraha Hospital. Courtesy Ministry of Health and Prevention

DUBAI // A man who had been deaf in one ear for 16 years has become the first person in the Middle East to be fitted with the world’s smallest hearing aid.

Baraa, a 31-year-old Palestinian who did not want to give his full name, had lived with single-sided deafness since suffering from nerve loss when a teenager, which paralysed half of his face.

But this week he had a bone anchor hearing aid implanted into his skull to deliver sound directly to the inner ear. The hearing aid is designed for patients with congenital abnormalities in the outer or middle ear.

People suffering from repeated or severe ear infections brought on by wearing traditional hearing devices can use the implant, which is only 16mm wide, 39mm long and 2.6mm deep. Baraa will have to wait three weeks to recover before activating the device.

The sales manager for a technology company in Dubai was never keen on getting a hearing aid, due to its large size.

“I used to live without hearing from one side and this affected me when I was going out and meeting people,” he said. “I had to make sure that I sit on the side from which I can hear. People sometimes have to repeat what they’re saying and this can be a problem. This was also affecting my work.

“Now, I will not have to worry about where I sit or meeting people outside. I used to avoid going out because of this problem.”

After facing resistance from his family, he agreed to surgery without telling them and only told them after it had been done.

“The Medtronic Sophono hearing implant has to be worn like a headset and you don’t know that it’s a hearing device,” said Baraa. “The size of the implant attracted me and when I heard that this would be first time it would be used in the Middle East, I was happy.”

He said that, at Dh30,000, it was reasonably priced as hearing implants could cost anywhere between Dh25,000 and Dh75,000.

The surgery was performed by Dr Ahmed Al Amadi, consultant and head of the ear, nose and throat department at Al Baraha Hospital.

Dr Al Amadi said that the implant was used for one-sided hearing loss or a type of hearing loss where children did not have a pinna – the visible part of the ear.

The implant, which was recently approved by the food and drug administration of the United States, has already been used in Canada, the US and Europe.

It is implanted in the skull and sound is transmitted from the external device to the implant. Then the implant transmits the sound to the skull, which sends it to the ear that the person can hear from. While the sound travels to the good ear, the patient thinks they are hearing from both sides.

“This is useful for patients who have complete hearing loss in one ear. About 30 per cent of my patients who suffer from hearing loss have this kind of problem,” said Dr Al Amadi.

Dr Youssif Al Serkal, assistant undersecretary for the Ministry of Health and Prevention’s hospitals sector, said the ministry strived to modernise medical equipment in line with efforts to improve the quality of local health services and increase diagnostic accuracy.

The Word Health Organisation says more than 5 per cent of the world’s population – about 360 million – has disabling hearing loss. Health experts in the region say about 4 per cent of babies born in the UAE have some kind of hearing impairment.