ABI clinical trial aims to help young deaf children to hear

A new clinical trial is aiming to help children that have never been able to hear. The House Research institute (HRI) and the children's hospital Los Angeles will be running a five-year clinical trial to assess the viability of auditory brainstem implants (ABI) in children that suffer from congenital deafness.

The institutions have received a grant to fund the trial that will see ABI's given to ten children between the ages of two and five who were born with either non-existent or malformed cochlear nerves. Children that are eligible for the trial will not have been able to hear in both ears since birth. The medical costs of the trail will be covered by the National Institutes of Health.

Children eligible for ABIs would not be able to benefit from cochlear implants, due to the missing or malformed cochlear nerves. Cochlear implants work by transmitting sound to the cochlear nerve, but for children who do not have this nerve, or have a non-functioning one, would still be unable to hear. Instead, an ABI sends the signal straight to the brain in order to allow the children to hear.

ABIs were previously approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use on children over the age of 12, following their development in 1979 by the HRI. This will be the first FDA approved clinical trial to provide ABIs to young children, as well as being the first to register the effect of the implant upon a person that has never had hearing.

Previous clinical trials on ABIs have showed that children without hearing still have the potential to understand speech. Many children outside of the US that were given ABIs at a young age have since demonstrated impressive learning rates when it comes to understanding speech without the use of visual cues. It is possible that the implantation of the ABI at a younger age may allow children who were born deaf to develop speech just as any other child.