BellaOnline Forums Health and Fitness Deafness Choose a Cochlear Implant brand

In Australia, until the last few months we have only had one Cochlear Implant brand available. Now a competitor has entered the market and patients are having to choose which brand to have implanted. In the USA there has been three brands for many years and people have had to make a choice. So my question is how did you make that choice?

I had no idea you had no choice in Australia until recently. I made my choice based on the technology of the implants, the available future prospects for software and hardware improvements, the ability of the implant to give me music, the size of the input dynamic range, and also on talking to users to find out their experiences. It's best to ask a lot of questions to help manage your expectations. I'm really pleased with my choice. I have been switched on for 2 months and music sounds perfect now - and I was born deaf! Amaaazing!

What brand did you choose? Once I had a Cochlear brand, while I did check to see what else was available for my second implant, I still chose to go with Cochlear. My reasons were - no other brands were yet being implanted in South Australia although my clinic was looking into it - so I would have had to wait another year or so and - I felt if I had the same brand implant then at least I only had one kind of mapping to go through each time and now that Cochlear has a remote control which can control both implants it would be a nuisance to have a different brand.

Music has been fabulous for me since my first implant. But two implants make a huge difference to what I hear and how rich the sound is.