{"id":1650,"date":"2010-10-21T14:54:53","date_gmt":"2010-10-21T18:54:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencebusiness.technewslit.com\/?p=1650"},"modified":"2010-10-21T14:54:53","modified_gmt":"2010-10-21T18:54:53","slug":"implanted-device-treats-balance-disorder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/?p=1650","title":{"rendered":"Implanted Device Treats Balance Disorder"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Vertigo<\/a>
(Cochlear Ltd.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On 21 October, a University of Washington Medical Center<\/a> (UW Medicine) patient will receive the world’s first device designed to quell vertigo associated with M\u00e9ni\u00e8re’s disease. The UW Medicine team that developed the implantable device plans a 10-person surgical trial of M\u00e9ni\u00e8re’s patients, which they hope will lead to its eventual use with other common balance disorders.<\/p>\n

M\u00e9ni\u00e8re\u2019s disease is a disorder of the inner ear — usually affecting one ear — that causes severe dizziness (vertigo), ringing in the ears (tinnitus), hearing loss, and a feeling of fullness or congestion in the ear. Its episodic attacks are thought to stem from the rupture of an inner-ear membrane. Endolymphatic fluid leaks out of the vestibular system, causing havoc to the brain’s perception of balance.<\/p>\n

The disease is most likely to occur in adults between 40 and 60 years of age. The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders<\/a> estimates that approximately 615,000 individuals in the United States are currently diagnosed with M\u00e9ni\u00e8re\u2019s disease and that 45,500 cases are newly diagnosed each year.<\/p>\n

With their device, its developers — Jay Rubinstein and James Phillips of UW’s Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery — aim to restore the patient’s balance during attacks while leaving natural hearing and residual balance function intact. The patient wears a processor behind the affected ear (pictured left) and activates it as an attack starts. The processor wirelessly signals the device, which is implanted almost directly underneath in a small well created in the temporal bone. The device in turn transmits electrical impulses through three electrodes inserted into the canals of the inner ear’s bony labyrinth.<\/p>\n

Promising early test results on primates led the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, in June, to approve the device and the proposed surgical implantation procedure. Cochlear Ltd.<\/a>, a Australian medical equipment company and maker of devices for hearing-impaired people will manufacture the device.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 21 October, a University of Washington Medical Center (UW Medicine) patient will receive the world’s first device designed to quell vertigo associated with M\u00e9ni\u00e8re’s disease. The UW Medicine team that developed the implantable device plans a 10-person surgical trial of M\u00e9ni\u00e8re’s patients, which they hope will lead to its eventual use with other common […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,15],"tags":[31,28,77,26],"class_list":["post-1650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ventures","category-products","tag-biomedical","tag-clinical-trials","tag-medical-device","tag-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1650"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1656,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650\/revisions\/1656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}