Following miracle surgery:

Kavishka says, amma, after five years

Shanika SRIYANANDA

The Nikapitiya family had waited for five years to hear their son mummer at least two syllable words. It was last Monday that five-year-old Kavishka broke that long silence saying, "Amma".

Little Kavishka Dilshan, unaware that he had gone into medical history of Sri Lanka was busy playing with his red car, which he loves so much. He now calls out 'amma amma' as he can hear a little. In a 90-minute long surgery done at the Lady Ridgeway Hospital for Children (LRHC) a titanium device was fixed behind Kavishka's ears to send sounds directly to the inner ear (cochlea) through the skull bone.

Hearing aid

The surgery, popular as the 'BAHA' - Bone Anchored Hearing Aid-now helps Kanishka, who could not hear clearly as the sounds will by-pass any defects or blockages in the outer and middle ear.

"Under cochlea BAHA, a sound processor captures sound via a microphone, sounds are converted into vibrations which are sent to the skull bone via a small titanium implant and then the skull bone provides a direct pathway for sound to travel to the cochlea through bone conduction, by-passing the outer and middle ear", explained the expert Dr. D. K. S. N. Yasawardena, Consultant ENT Surgeon of the LRHC who did the BAHA surgery under the guidance of Dr. Sunil Dutt, a Surgeon from Cochlear Ltd.

As to BAHA surgery, he said that this would be the ideal solution for people who have conductive hearing loss where sound cannot easily travel through the normal hearing pathway due to blockages or defects in the ear canal or middle ear.

Many people experiencing this type of hearing loss, find even the most powerful hearing aids inadequate so they may give up hope of ever living a full hearing life", he added.Dr. Yasawardena said that BAHA which was in use since 1972, had helped people with chronic ear infections, inherited external auditory canal absence and single-sided deafness to gain hearing.

According to Dr. Yasawardena, BAHA surgery has two phases. The first phase where the metal screw is fixed to the skull bone, while the second stage involves the fixing of the sound processor.

No clear evidence

According to Dr. Yasawardena, though there was no clear evidence to cite as the causes, there are over 15 such deaf children reported to the LRHC and this number could be more if considering cases reported to other hospitals. But Dr. Dutt said that in India the main cause for deafness was marriages between close relations in the family.

" Single most common reason is marriage between very close family members, where they marry the mother's younger brother to solve the dowry problem.

The occurrence is two to three per 1,000 live births in the countries in South Asia whereas this is one for 1,000 live births world over", he revealed.

According to Dr. Dutt, the other reasons for significant deafness are causes during pregnancy, during childbirth and after childbirth. "During pregnancy is due to some infections that the mother suffer and medication Jaundice and some infections after delivery would result in the poor hearing in children", he said, adding that Rubella vaccine would help to prevent these deformities.

Motivate others

For Kavishaka's parents, it was the end of suffering, thanking Dr. Yasawardena for directing her to do the BAHA surgery, a relieved Lalitha said that many parents, who wanted to see their children talking would come forward to do BAHA, which was introduced by Mihira Wickramarachchi of J.M. Wickramarachchi and Co, the local distributor for Cochlea Ltd. Australia.

"He is now learning to grasp the words. Still we have to use sign language and also talk loud as much as we can to convey a message to him", said Lalitha, an employee of the People's Bank Kegalle, who thanked her friends at the Bank for giving her financial support for the surgery. The Nikapitiya family of Kegalle with four boys hopefully waits to see little Kavishka talk fluently after a nine months when he is supposed to under go the final surgery to gain complete hearing.