Patients with cochlear implants at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB) have taken part in the making of a patient information video showing how the implants can change the lives of people with severe to profound deafness.

The Trust has created the video for patients with severe to profound deafness who might benefit from a cochlear implant. It is also designed to provide vital information for potential referrers as well as the general public.

The Midlands Hearing Implant Programme, based at UHB’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham (QEHB) and at Birmingham Children’s Hospital, has performed more than 1,000 implants on both adults and children from across the region since the Cochlear Implant Programme was established in 1990.

The video, entitled “Back into Sound: a patient’s guide to cochlear implants”, shows the entire patient journey, illustrated throughout with patients talking about their own experiences.

It begins with patients describing their life before they had an implant and the devastating effect their deafness had on work, family and friends. It then goes on to cover the operation itself, the switching-on of the device and, most importantly, how cochlear implants can change people’s lives.

The video, which has optional subtitles, also includes technical and medical information presented using real footage, diagrams and animations in order to explain this high technology field to a lay audience. It was made by a collaboration between the Hearing Implant team and Medical Illustration at UHB and was sponsored by Cochlear Europe Ltd with support from The British Cochlear Implant Group.

It will be made freely available to patients, the public and other implant centres via the UHB website, and is also available on DVD.

Louise Craddock, Midlands Hearing Implant Programme Manager at UHB, said: “Cochlear implant technology is highly specialist and complex. The assessment process involves imparting a great deal of technical and medical information to patients. This can be overwhelming for patients and it is time consuming for staff to convey all the necessary information to each person. Moreover, it limits the available time that can be spent addressing patients’ individual concerns or queries.

“We also endeavour to give all patients on assessment the opportunity to talk to an existing cochlear implant recipient as this is the only way they can find out what it is really like from someone who has been through it themselves."

She added that the video may reduce the need for some patients to travel to QEHB for a face-to-face meeting as it will answer many of their questions.

“We made the video to enable patients to access high-quality information at home, in their own time. As a regional service, some of our patients may have a long distance to travel, so we hope this will reduce the number of visits patients have to make to our department.

“We hope that having watched the video, patients will find the process of giving informed consent for surgery easier. We are very proud of the work we do and we hope that the increased publicity about our highly specialist service will encourage further referrals so that we can improve the lives of even more severe to profoundly deaf people in our region.”

Watch the video