Cochlear implants an exciting option for hearing loss

By Lethbridge Herald on September 23, 2025.

Joe Manio
Lethbridge Herald 
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Although hearing loss is often associated with aging, unaddressed or improperly treated hearing loss in children can cause significant, long-lasting effects on their speech and language development, social-emotional well-being, academic performance, and future educational and employment opportunities.

The first line of treatment for hearing loss is hearing aids, which have evolved from the clunky devices to today’s smaller, sleeker, more powerful versions. They’re available in a variety of colors to suit your style and comfort preferences.

But what happens when traditional hearing aids aren’t effective? Enter hearing implants –  specifically, cochlear implants: electronic devices for people with severe to profound hearing loss who cannot benefit from conventional hearing aids.

It consists of an external microphone and speech processor to pick up and process sound, and an internal surgically implanted component with an electrode array that goes into the cochlea. The implant translates sound into electrical impulses that the auditory nerve understands, allowing the brain to perceive sound. 

Eighty-four-year-old Tom McLeod describes what happened after getting his cochlear implant 15 years early at the tender age of 69.

“I was home there for six weeks 100 100-per-cent deaf and one of the interesting things I’ve been warned about is that you may hear some sounds from ‘outer space’ and sure enough, there are things that happened that I remember really well,” says McLeod. “One of them was (hearing) a voice, a beautiful baritone or tenor type voice like a radio announcer that I could hear crystal clear right out of the blue.

He also picked up some chamber music on occasion, which was particularly annoying since he wasn’t a fan.

Sonic glitches aside, cochlear implants restored his hearing and his quality of life as a senior.  McLeod however, made an adult choice to undergo the surgical procedure. What about very young children?

The primary issue for children’s cochlear implants is parental consent, as children usually lack the maturity to consent to the irreversible procedure, which involves significant medical, social, and cultural considerations beyond the immediate medical risks. 

Ethically, consent must be truly informed, requiring parents to receive unbiased information about all potential outcomes, including the potential benefits of “deaf life” and the loss of cultural and linguistic aspects of the deaf community, to support their child’s best interests.

The core ethical consideration is the “best interests of the child,” which requires balancing medical risks and benefits with the child’s future social, linguistic, and cultural development.

“Should children be implanted before they get the choice?” Asks Hole. “The problem is that if you wait until a child could choose, the period of the brain development that would allow them to develop normal speech would be missed. So we put that on the parents to decide for their children.”