**Conflict of interest**

Patrick D'Haese is an employee of MED-EL GmbH, Innsbruck, Austria. Prof. Van de Heyning receives grants to the institution from MED-EL and Cochlear.

**115**

**Author details**

Patrick S.C. D'Haese1

and Paul Van de Heyning2

1 MED-EL, Innsbruck, Austria

provided the original work is properly cited.

\*, Vincent Van Rompaey2

\*Address all correspondence to: patrick.dhaese@medel.com

2 Antwerp University Hospital, University of Antwerp, Edegem, Belgium

© 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

, Marc De Bodt<sup>2</sup>

*The Need to Increase Awareness and Access to Cochlear Implantation*

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.86972*

*The Need to Increase Awareness and Access to Cochlear Implantation DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.86972*

*Advances in Rehabilitation of Hearing Loss*

**5. Conclusions**

most.

can help.

**Conflict of interest**

had a readership that were already interested in health topics and were thus more likely to click on the advert. This approach seemed promising, however, follow up awareness data collected from another random sample showed that there was little change in the attitudes of either the professional of general groups. Future campaigns should be focused on those who have already been identified as having a hearing loss but what form it should take or how this group could be accessed directly is less clear. Should the patients themselves be made aware of CI as a treatment option or should audiologists and ENT professionals be the focus? The pathway to improving awareness of CI is unclear, but it is certain that better management of hearing loss will be essential for the future in our ageing population.

• The prevalence of hearing loss is high with around 5% of the world's popula-

• The burden of hearing loss as a disease is also high with hearing loss in the top five causes of years lived with disability in 2015, 2016 and 2017 for males and top 10 for females along with low back pain, migraine, iron-deficiency anae-

• Cochlear implantation is a proven and effective treatment for bilateral severe to profound hearing loss, yet the **utilisation** of CI is poor (less than 10% of suitable patients), especially in the older adult population who arguably need it

• Survey data shows that awareness activities are needed for both professionals and the general population to improve knowledge of what a CI is and how it

• Online activities are a cost-effective approach to improve awareness in the general public. However, professionals still get their information from confer-

Patrick D'Haese is an employee of MED-EL GmbH, Innsbruck, Austria. Prof. Van de Heyning receives grants to the institution from MED-EL and Cochlear.

ences, colleagues and medical books and journals.

tion effected and this number is set to rise as the population ages.

mia, and major depressive disorder.

**114**
