A cochlear implant (CI) is a surgically implanted neuroprosthetic device it helps and provides a sense of sound to a person with severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss. Cochlear implants bypass in which the normal acoustic hearing process, replaces it with electric hearing. The sound sensation which comes from the sound is converted to electric signals which directly stimulate the auditory nerve. Adaptation of the brain not only to the new mode of hearing but eventually can interpret the electric signals like sound and speech.

The implant has two main components. Outside component is generally worn behind the ear, but could also be attached to clothing, mainly for young children. The component like sound processor which contains microphones, electronics including with DSP chips (digital signal processor), coils, battery, which helps to transmits a signal to the implant across the skin. The inside component which is an actual implant has a coil to receive signals, electronics, and an array of electrodes which is placed inside the cochlea, which stimulate the cochlear nerve.

The surgical procedure is performed under general anesthesia. The surgical procedure begins with a careful evaluation by ENT surgeon, anesthetist, audiologist and physician. A small incision is made at the back of the ear and then the surgical implant the receiver. The receiver is then connected to electrodes that are surgically inserted inside the cochlea. The surgery usually takes 1-2 hours to complete. The surgical risks are minimal but still, it can include dizziness and tinnitus.

Cochlear Implant Surgery in India, the results are really good when users get good hearing and speech perception skills post-implantation, mostly when it is combined with lip-reading. But challenges that remain with these implants is that speech and hearing understanding skills after implantation show a wide range of variation in many individual implant users. One has to consider, things such as cause and duration of hearing loss, location or where it is situated in the cochlea, and most important overall health of the cochlear nerve, but it is also important to see individual capabilities of re-learning and ready to contribute to this variation, where no certain predictive factors are known. In cases of children with severe to profound hearing loss, the implants have shown to a positive contribution to spoken language development.

Benefits of Cochlear Implants
A person develops more confidence in different social situations, people enjoy music, and they can speak at the normal hearing level, start talking on phone, speech, and language developed at the right age, communicate better with teachers, friends, and family. The patient starts enjoying the world of new sounds which help them a lot to connect with the world. The rate of success of a cochlear implant is higher at young ages.

Post-Cochlear Implant Surgery
Rehabilitation is very important after surgery because the patient needs to know to learn and relearning techniques because it is different from normal hearing aids because they amplify sounds to be heard by damaged ear whereas cochlear implant directly stimulates auditory nerve and then it sends signals to the brain which recognizes them as sounds. With experience, the patient learns to hear and enjoy conversation, the sound of the environment and music.