Connecting through hearing

Alexander Huber wants to develop a hearing prosthesis for the middle ear. This would be of particular help to children with moderate to severe hearing loss for whom a hearing aid is no longer sufficient.

I would like more information →

Gabriel, now ten, was born with moderate hearing loss. Around two out of every 1,000 children are affected by this kind of inner ear disorder. For a long time he was able to compensate well with his hearing aid, but recently his hearing has deteriorated. As soon as a window’s open in the classroom, he has to ask what was just said. Because he has difficulty following conversations, friends invite him to play less and less often. He’s feeling his sense of belonging being eroded along with his sense of hearing, which is something that makes him afraid. And his parents are concerned that their son will only be able to keep up with lessons with additional remedial teaching.

“We want to be able to offer children and young people like Gabriel a new kind of solution,” explains Alexander Huber, who heads the Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery at University Hospital Zurich (USZ). He also directs the hospital’s Cochlear Implant Center, which together with its research department is internationally recognized for its expertise.

Alexander Huber wants to work with his team to develop a solution somewhere between classic hearing aids for the hard of hearing and cochlear implants for children who are born deaf. The basis is a feasibility study involving patients at USZ, scheduled to run for three years. The project is receiving support in the form of a donation from the Palatin Foundation to the USZ Foundation.

Huber’s idea is to develop an extracochlear stimulation prosthesis, in other words one located in the middle ear. This would stimulate the hearing electrically, enabling significantly better understanding of speech than with a hearing aid, but without damaging the structure of the inner ear as happens with cochlear implants. Alexander Huber explains that this is particularly important for children and young people. “The youngest generation will only be able to benefit from any new technologies that emerge in the coming decades, for example stem cell therapy, if the structure of their inner ear remains intact.” If the study confirms that this innovative new approach works, it would be the optimal solution for children like Gabriel.

*anonymized/symbolic image

100% financed

Palatin Foundation