"Trumbull Girl Works On Language With New Implant" - Sophia Kunthara

Tessa Arden, a seven year old girl from India adopted from an orphanage, recently received a Cochlear Implant enabling her to hear sounds for the first time. She has been working with a speech pathologist to learn how to communicate. It's a far cry from where Teesa was a year ago, where her only way to communicate was with hand motions or gibberish. Teesa is the first person in the Northeast to receive the new "SlimJ" cochlear implant, a two-piece hearing device with an advanced electrode that was approved by the FDA in November. She became one of the first people in the country to receive the device at all when it was implanted during a December surgery at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai. "When I first met her she had zero words, like not even a single word," said Maura Cosetti, MD, director of the cochlear implant center at the ear institute at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai. "But she's so interactive and so bubbly and clearly so attentive to the world that, by the time that she got this implant, she had like three words that she could say perfectly. That rate of speech development is remarkable." Cochlear implants are like phones, Dr. Cosetti said, where new technology is introduced regularly. The "SlimJ" implant Teesa received is a very soft and thin wire that was "snaked" into her cochlea to provide sound stimulation to her inner ear.

• Maura K. Cosetti, MD, Assistant Professor, Otolaryngology, Neurosurgery, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Director, The Cochlear Implant Center, Ear Institute, New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai

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