Let Them Hear Foundation

Cochlear Implant Parent Support Group

Please join us Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 7:00 pm

Address:
The Triplitt Home
2171 E. Lexington Avenue
Fresno, Ca 93720
559-322-8775

For parents and family of children with cochlear implants or considering implants. A time to visit and share experiences in order to better support our children.

Co-hosted by:
Traci Triplitt & Jacqui Glasener
Please RSVP to Traci at 322-8775
If you are unable to attend but have questions or would like to be on a mailing list for future events please contact us.

Directions:
From Herndon Avenue,
Turn North on Maple.
Proceed on Maple to Nees Avenue.
Turn left (East) on to Nees.
Make your first right (North) on to Backer.
Baker T’s into Lexington.
Turn left (East) on Lexington.
We are on the right in the middle of the block.

Let Them Hear Foundation helps those with hearing loss
The North Platte Telegraph
By John Lindenberger
April 30, 2008
Last week, we reported on Kevin Fries’ battle in trying to obtain insurance coverage for his son’s cochlear implant and the miracle that occurred when the manufacturer offered to pay for the implant as well as the surgery.

Before Fries received this miraculous news, he was preparing to seek help from the Let Them Hear Foundation’s Insurance Advocacy Program, a team of legal professionals who assist patients with hearing loss.

However, this legal advocacy is just a small part of the organization that also provides a clinical services team, an international medical missions team and a training center, according to Public Relations Manager Caitlin Roberson.

“The Let Them Hear Foundation is passionate about bringing the miracle of hearing to those who choose not to live in silence in the U.S. and around the world, particularly those of challenged circumstances,” Roberson said. “We facilitate access to hearing medical care for all, regardless of income level, insurance provider or country of residence.”

Based in East Palo Alto, Calif., the Let Them Hear Foundation was founded by Dr. Joseph Roberson, a world leader in ear surgery. The organization operates in conjunction with the California Ear Institute in Northern California.

Since its inception in 2003, the Let Them Hear Foundation has trained leading doctors from 17 different countries, including two-thirds of the cochlear-implant surgeons in China. The foundation has also coached nearly 1,000 clinicians and schoolteachers.

Since 2006, the organization has achieved healthcare coverage for 158 million Americans who were formerly denied and prompted nine of the nation’s 10 major U.S. insurers to alter their policies to include coverage for bilateral cochlear implants.

For more information about the Let Them Hear Foundation, call 650-462-3143 or go to www.letthemhear.org.

Let Them Hear
The North Platte Telegraph
By John Lindenberger
April 23, 2008

After unsuccessfully trying to get insurance coverage for a much-needed cochlear implant for his hearing-impaired son, former North Platte resident Kevin Fries received some great news last week.

Fries said the company that manufactures the cochlear implant has agreed to pay both for the device and also for the surgery and resulting hospitalization, a combined cost of well over $100,000.

“They obviously went above and beyond the call of duty,” Kevin said.

Kevin grew up in North Platte, and his family lived here for a couple years after finishing college. In 2004, they moved to Grand Island where Kevin works as a recruiter for a collection agency and his wife, Dana, is an attorney.

The Fries family has been working diligently to find a remedy for their son’s hearing loss since 2005. That’s when they first noticed that their son, Grayson, was having some difficulty hearing.

At the age of four, Grayson was fitted with hearing aids to support his hearing loss. A year later, doctors determined that Grayson’s hearing had deteriorated to the point that he needed a cochlear implant.

Rather than amplifying sound like a hearing aid, a cochlear implant is a complex electronic device that converts sound into electrical impulses that can be interpreted by the brain.

The device is implanted behind a person’s ear, and electrodes provide a pathway to the cochlea within the inner ear, sending impulses through the auditory nerve and creating an effect similar to hearing.

The implant does not restore a person’s ability to hear, but it does bring it to a level where the patient is able to function and receive auditory clues that allow them to speak and understand verbal communication.

Grayson received his first cochlear implant in December of 2006 at the age of 5. Afterward, Kevin said his son excelled in school for the remainder of his Kindergarten year, and he had a great start as a first grader.

“He was achieving above normal scores for a child with his hearing disability, and we were confident that he would continue to excel,” Kevin added.

However, Grayson received a contusion on the implant site, resulting in swelling below the skin. Eventually, Grayson developed an antibiotic-resistant staph infection (MRSA) and the implant had to be removed.

The idea was to implant a new device once Grayson had fully recovered. Unfortunately, Kevin’s employer had switched to a different insurance company—one that would not cover a cochlear implant.

With the support of his doctors, Kevin appealed twice to Coventry Health Care of Nebraska without success. In his appeal, Kevin pointed out that 90 percent of health insurance plans cover cochlear implant services.

The appeal also indicated that Coventry Health Care does cover other medically necessary prosthetic devices, yet specifically excludes cochlear implants—the only prosthetic device used for treating hearing loss.

“Something needs to be done about that process and how it all works because this is a disability that is no different than if someone lost an arm or a leg,” Kevin said about his struggles with the insurance company.

Kevin even testified earlier this year before a Nebraska legislative committee that was considering a bill to mandate coverage for cochlear implants. Unfortunately, that bill never made it out of committee this year.

After hearing that their second appeal was denied, the Fries family was preparing to continue the fight with the help of the Let Them Hear Foundation, an organization that provides legal advocacy for patients with hearing loss.

“We were exploring all potential options that we had available to us,” Kevin said.

That’s when they got the call from the manufacturer of the cochlear implant. Kevin said they offered to pay for the surgery, which costs about $28,000, as well as the implant, which is another $85,000.

“They were under no obligation to do something like this, yet they felt with Grayson’s history with their equipment and his need and lack of funding for a new implant that they would do this for him,” Kevin said. “It really was an unexpected miracle.”

Sharing Valuable Real Estate

Science News 

By Tina Hesman Saey 

May 13, 2008

 Old brains can learn new tricks but retain their knack for lost senses.

A new study of two people who went blind while young and regained sight as adults shows that blind people’s brains remember how to see even when rewired for sound.

Scientists have known for some time that when a person loses a sense, the brain rewires itself to use parts previously dedicated to the lost sense. In blind people, for instance, vision centers can be remodeled to make sense of sound or turned into touch-processing areas.

But rewired brains don’t erase the old vision-processing software. Instead, sight and sound processors occupy the same space in the brains of people with recovered vision, Melissa Saenz of the California Institute of Technology and her colleagues show in a study published May 14 in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Essentially, blind people’s brains allow hearing circuits to squat on territory normally reserved for vision, Saenz says — and that’s not surprising.

“This is a big part of the brain. It’s valuable real estate,” she says. “What we didn’t know was how these new functions move in.”

In order to find out, Saenz and her colleagues studied two people who regained sight as adults after many years of blindness: Mike May, 54, a businessman from California who lost his sight in a chemical accident when he was 3 years old; and a 53-year-old woman who was blind from a young age as a result of both retinopathy of prematurity and cataract growth. A cornea and stem cell transplant when May was 46 partially restored his vision in one eye. The woman had surgery to partially restore her sight at age 43.

Sighted people use a part of the visual cortex called MT+/V5 to see objects in motion. Other parts of the visual cortex are responsible for recognizing faces or stationary objects. Auditory motion, such as the sounds of a car driving past or footsteps retreating down a hallway, is deciphered by a network of brain areas, including an area adjacent to MT+/V5.

May and the other sight-restored volunteer used MT+/V5 for deciphering both visual and sound motion, but not speech or other types of sights or sounds.

That indicates that MT+/V5 shouldn’t be thought of as exclusively a visual area or an auditory area, says Alvaro Pascual-Leone, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston who was not involved in the research. “It’s not a visual area per se; it’s a motion area.”

Learning how the brain uses its real estate may improve therapies for restoring vision and hearing, Pascual-Leone says. “Restoring visual input is not enough for seeing,” he says. The brain must also be prepared to handle the information.

May is still amassing an encyclopedia of clues to tell him what he sees. “It wasn’t until I had the operation, took the bandages off and started to see again that I was introduced to the intricacies of vision,” he says.

He can see colors. Motion is no problem. But he’s terrible with recognizing faces and objects.

“Why can I run and catch a ball, but I can’t recognize my wife’s face,” he wonders.

The researchers in the new study didn’t test how well the sight-restored people process motion information. It’s possible that having both senses integrated in a single area could improve motion detection, or it could hinder one or the other, says Franco Lepore, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Montreal.

He has studied similar phenomena in deaf people who have had cochlear implants to help them hear again. Parts of the audio-processing areas of deaf people’s brains get rewired to deal with vision. After hearing is restored, competition in the auditory centers of the brain impair people’s ability to decipher complex images while listening to sound, he says.

Regaining sight means getting another useful piece of information about the world, May says, but he still uses sound and touch to make sense of what he is seeing. And while the study shows that losing and regaining his sight has changed his brain, May says the experiences haven’t revolutionized his life.

“It’s life enriching. It hasn’t changed my life at all,” May says. “It’s like going to another country or meeting a really neat person. These things enrich your life, but they don’t change it in a profound way. Having vision is great, but being blind is great too.”

Researchers Leap A Nano Hurdle
ABC News (Australia)
January 29, 2007
Australian researchers have discovered a cheap and simple way to make sheets of carbon just one atom thick. Their finding has implications for a range of developments from solar cells to bionic ears… “Because of the biological affinity of carbon, they might also be useful as electrodes for a range of medical bionic devices such as cochlear implants.”

Cochlear Implant Attorney On A Roll
CochlearWorld
January 21, 2007
I ran across an article in the Contra Costa Times last night about Sheri Byrne-Haber, a cochlear implant attorney. In 2004, Bryne-Haber launched an assault on insurance companies challenging their denials of a cochlear implant surgery. Since that time, the East Palo Alto-based attorney has won every one of the 325 cochlear implant cases she has litigated (wow!). Apparently, she has hundreds more under way.

Day Of Surgery
Mission: Little Brother Blog
By Sonja Herne
January 17, 2007

**Sonja Herne is the mother of an LTHF patient**
About 9:15am, we were told that the surgery had started. The Let Them Hear Foundation staff kept us busy chatting and brought us all kinds of puzzle books, water, gum and such. We talked for hours and are sooooo grateful for their generous gift of their time. They also bought us lunch and we enjoyed the distraction. (Special note for the people who visited and waitied with us - you are all amazing - THANK YOU!!!!!)… I think it was about 6pm when the doctors all came out with smiles on their faces. Everything went really well and they were all thrilled with the outcome.

Deafness Can’t Subdue A Remarkable Life
Newsday
By Katti Gray
January 21, 2008
When, at 5 months old, Brooke Suskin was diagnosed as profoundly deaf, it became her parents’ determination to help her grow up as any normal kid might. They set out to ensure as much as possible that she’d be unfettered from other people’s beliefs that her disability made her different, less than capable even… They fitted her with a hearing aid immediately after the diagnosis. Right then and there, they enrolled their daughter in a program for hearing-impaired infants. By age 3, she was riding a school bus to special classes. By age 5, she had the reading comprehension skills of a second-grader. When she was 9, she got a cochlear implant, which really ratcheted up the volume for her.

Coach’s Stomp Speaks Volumes
The Washington Post
By Ryan Mink
January 20, 2008
Great Mills junior forward Shawnese Taylor is legally deaf. Her coach, Brian Weisner, uses a special wireless microphone during games that connects to Taylor’s hearing aid, allowing her to hear only him, not the crowd and not her teammates. But even when Weisner simply stomps his foot, as he often did even in Great Mills’s 65-44 win over Huntingtown on Friday, Taylor and the rest of the Hornets immediately respond.

Little Lobbyists, Armed With Stuffed Animals, Push To Be Heard
9News.com (CO)
January 21, 2007
In all likelihood, Austin Galoob was the only lobbyist at the State Capitol on Monday to think what was going on was “really cool.” Then again, the 13-year-old 8th grader from Englewood was part of an unlikely special interest, a group filled with dozens of hearing impaired kids. “We are trying to get the Senate to vote yes on the insurance companies covering hearing aids,” Austin told Sen. Chris Romer (D-Denver) after presenting him with a stuffed animal with hearing aids attached and a pamphlet describing Senate Bill 57. “Hearing aids usually cost about $2,000 per ear.” All over the Capitol, kids pigeonholed lawmakers, with cookies and juice boxes in one hand and stuffed animal sea otters in the other. Austin’s parents and two older sisters have had cochlear implants that are required to be covered by insurance in Colorado.