Auditory Implant Service

The Service was planned in 2005 in response to a shortage of capacity for new patients in the other London programmes. Patients, especially children, from Southwest London, Kent, Sussex and Surrey were often required to travel great distances to access Auditory Implant services. The ENT and Audiology departments at St Georges felt the new Auditory Implant Service at St George’s could fill this void and the service took its place in 2006.

The senior medical staff in the department has considerable experience of cochlear implantation assessment, surgery and rehabilitation through previous work in Sydney, London and Nottingham. Expert advice on new service design was sought from our colleagues at other established Implant services to design the patient pathways and systems. We want to provide excellent habilitation services for children from day one, so we work in close collaboration with the specialist speech and language therapist, teacher of the deaf from Wandsworth Sensory Support Service and Children’s Psychology service at St George’s.

The Service started as a Paediatric Cochlear Implant programme and first surgery was on a child in 2006. Since then over 500 adults and children have been implanted, including many bilateral cases. The Service started accepting adults in 2008 and has now implanted patients from 8 months of age through to over 90 years of age. Over this time the service has further expanded to offer Bone conduction hearing implants and Middle ear implants to suitable patients, allowing us to provide a complete range of implantable hearing solutions and managing over 700 patients with implants currently.

The Service also takes active part in National and International Research Studies. The team members have authored and presented various research papers at National and International conferences.