Word: columpus
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...seven years, David Columpus could not understand television programs or carry on conversations with friends. Reason: an illness had left him totally deaf. But in 1977 life began to change radically for the former owner of a Michigan glass-recycling plant. He volunteered to take part in an experiment at the University of Utah Medical Center in which eight tiny wires were implanted inside his inner ear and linked to a plastic plug, the size of a nickel, inserted in his skull behind the left ear. On one memorable day, the plug was connected to a large central computer...
...Today Columpus is rarely shut...
Last April the large computer was replaced with a microprocessor, the size of a Sony Walkman, that he wears on his belt. Columpus, 52, who now works as a counselor to the deaf in San Diego, has regained 70% of his understanding of the spoken word, although in groups he can decipher only one voice at a time. He can hear music played on a single instrument; orchestral sounds are garbled. This wedding of the computer to the hearing aid is the work of Kolff Medical, Inc., the makers of the artificial heart that was implanted in the late Barney...
Over the next few months, others will be joining Columpus in the joys of rediscovering hearing. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in recent days has approved the implantation of the new device, called Ineraid, in 20 more people. Kolff will donate the first two devices, but the other patients will each have to pay about $10,000. In addition, implant surgery at he Utah medical center will cost approximately $7,000. Doctors say that the implantation is comparable to root-canal surgery, but pain and discomfort disappear after about a week. Thereafter, the barely visible implanted plug requires...
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