Dental hearing aid gets approved in Europe
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- Published: Monday, 28 March 2011 13:21
- Written by News Editor
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While conventional hearing aids use air conduction to increase the volume of sound travelling through the air, SoundBite uses a different approach - bone conduction. First, a network of mini microphones placed behind the impaired ear pick up the sound in the environment and cancel out the noise. The sound is transmitted wirelessly to the prosthetic in the mouth.
The device sends the vibrations through the teeth and bones directly to the cochlea - the auditory part of the inner ear - bypassing the middle and outer ear. This way it can help those who are deaf in one ear to hear in stereo. The company that makes the system, Sonitus Medical, said that the mechanism is the first ever non-surgical device to use bone conduction.
According to the RNID, only six million of them require a hearing aid - and out of those six million, only about two million actually wear one. Many do not like the look of it, and there are those who find it difficult to convince their GP to prescribe one, a spokesperson said.
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