Scottish surgeons performed the first surgery in Great Britain to implant a new type of hearing implant (the so-called Bonebridge device) combined with reconstruction of the auricle in a patient with mandibofacial dysostosis (TCS).
This disease is manifested by a significantly reduced lower jaw, unnaturally slanting eyes, and the absence or deformation of the auricles, which makes it impossible to wear classic hearing aids.
The Bonebridge implant mimics the operation of the eardrum. A sound processor attached to the patient’s head picks up the sound waves, amplifies them and transmits them to the middle ear through the bones of the skull.
– The sound quality is much better now, I can hear from greater distances, catch sounds that I have not heard before. The implant weighs almost nothing. I am extremely grateful to the doctors for putting this device on for me – says the patient, 29-year-old Brian Hogg.
During the same operation, the doctors reconstructed the patient’s ear using a fragment of his rib.
Source: BBC / OpenSctotland
Tekst: Tomasz Kobosz