EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) – The El Paso Children’s Hospital (EPCH) broke ground by providing a patient with cochlear implant services from start to finish.
Josias Valenzuela, 2, was born deaf, and he is the first patient to receive such services in El Paso, according to EPCH.
His family, having sought ear, nose, and throat care (ENT) in different parts of El Paso, went to Drs. Jonathan and Amanda Chiao.
“But also, it just signifies that we are ready. We are ready as a hospital to provide these services in-house, and that’s a big deal for our community. Our community’s greatly underserved with pediatric audiologists and cochlear implant audiologists,” said Dr. Amanda Chiao.
This marked a significant step for EPCH, as they said they can now offer the community the opportunity to keep all of their ENT care in El Paso.
The cochlear implant consists of an external and internal portion, with the internal portion having to be implanted through surgery under the skin, and the external portion is a device that is placed behind the ear.
Valenzuela underwent surgery from Dr. Jonathan Chiao to have the first portion implanted. Two weeks after that, he went through the activation process for the external device with Dr. Amanda Chiao.
“What we look for today is truly just any sort of response from the child, like desires and really that he tolerates wearing it. This is a different way of hearing for a lot of kids and for him. Josias has never really heard sound before, the way that his hearing loss happened from birth and what he kind of went through the first two years of his life. This is all a new sensory experience for him. So, the activation is truly activating the external part to talk to the internal part that Dr. Chiao implanted,” said Dr. Amanda Chiao.
Activation day can be very different for any kid, explained Dr. Amanda Chiao, and she doesn’t like setting expectations for parents, so they were prepared for anything on Valenzuela’s activation day.
“For Josias particularly, today was a great response because he tolerated them. He’s only 2; he’s a toddler. He’s going to fuss and at the end he needed a nap for sure, his parents said. But he did great. He tolerated them on his ears; we were able to give him enough what I would consider stimulation or volume to know that he’s getting some access to sound,” said Dr. Amanda Chiao.
After a successful activation day, Valenzuela will continue working with his auditory-verbal speech therapist and his audiologist to help integrate sound into his life and make sense of speech.
“It’s a long journey and it’s something that we talk really early on with our families about getting a cochlear implant as a lifelong journey. The internal part, the inside part, is meant to be with them forever. And the outside can change. But the idea is that this is how they hear, and this is how they communicate in the world, whether it’s just using their ears in the way that they speak or it’s with sign language or both. And so, it is a lifelong journey that includes a lot of family commitment and Josias has the perfect family and the amount of support that he’s going to need,” said Dr. Amanda Chiao.
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