Speaker 1:
In 1970 the University of Melbourne
established Australia’s first Department
of Otolaryngology appointing professor
Graham Clark as its inaugural chair the
research undertaken by Professor Clarke
and his multidisciplinary team led to
the development of his breakthrough
bionic ear the multi-channel cochlear
implant enabling truly meaningful sound
for deaf people around the world
professor Graham Clark and Professor
Richard Dahl have joined us today to
share their insights into this important achievement
professor Clarke can you please first
give us some background on this
pioneering surgical research scientists
quest to enable hearing has inspired
many major contributions over the years
in fact for centuries in our own case it
took many years of research and
experiments understanding the brain and
how it processes sound developing the
surgical techniques even the tools
finding a pathway between hearing basic
noise and understanding intricate sound
such as speech all this resulted in our
successful multi-channel cochlear
implant in August 1978 at Mullins
eye and ear hospital with our first
patient rod Saunders when did you become
deaf where do I live No
Quinn Quinn Quinn
there was so much material wrapped
around his head wrapped around his head
he could hardly keep his balance our
array of electrodes that had multiple
channels enabled us to engineer a
sophisticated processing of the speech
signal the speech code that was
discovered enabled profoundly deaf
adults to understand running speech both
we then without lip-reading fail male
good
well it’s gotta get it yeah I’m gonna
clay rule roll what is the pitch what is
the pitch can you hear me
what can a good since that first
breakthrough we’ve continued to develop
the technology and I am proud that it is
inspired further developments from our
own and other scientists and researchers
around the world we’ve seen some
enormous advances over the years as
Richard well knows yes that’s right
brain the initial speech coding strategy
and the refinements we’ve made gave us a
far greater understanding of how to
manage the sound signals so they could
be understood it’s a rather simple way
to look at this process but think of
tuning a radio and you can have an ugly
squawk and basically messy noise if
you’re off the station or you can adjust
the controls and fine tune it so you get
the best available sound that’s the type
of thing we’ve been involved in over
about 20 years in improving the cochlear
implant right back there in the 80s we
quickly realized that the the clinical
and educational management of people
with multi-channel cochlear implants was
an essential part for its success this
work all began at the Royal Victorian
irony a hospital in Melbourne the first
public based hospital clinic of its type
in the world our research then led to
the Industrial Development by cochlear
limited and it was trialed in 1982 on
six patients the first was on Graham
Carrick in September that year
the good results we obtained on these
patients led to an international trial
especially in the US and in 1985 the
Australian product became the first
multi-channel cochlear implant to be
approved by the US Food and Drug
Administration professor Darrell you
were part of the team that led the
approach just how important was it to
get the approval well it was extremely
important especially commercially to get
that approval from the FDA because it
meant that the research at the
University of Melbourne could get out
there into the world and it set the
standard for the rest of the developers
around the world to follow
I imagine that approval would not have
come easily I know it wasn’t easy we’re
working in the dark of was something I’d
certainly never done before and we were
trying to create the the approval
process as we went along I think the FDA
were as well because they hadn’t done it
before but we had no room for failure
and we were dealing with lots of
different clinics and hospitals and
surgeons and we had to bring that all
together and luckily we got there yes it
was certainly a major achievement the
FDA approval was a statement of
confidence in all our research the
technology the surgery and the device
itself and that initial approval led to
our refining the product for use in
profoundly deaf children it was
evaluated on our first child in 1985 and
our first young child in 1986 the birth
to baby
that’s my father I went to see Crocodile
Dundee to the results of our trials were
published in 87 in four international
journals and we had presentations in 87
and 88 at major conferences this also
led to an international study trial for
the US Food and Drug Administration and
in 1990 we were delighted to hear that
the Australian product became the first
cochlear implant of any sort to be
approved by the FDA for use in young
children this represents the first major
advance anywhere in the world in
probably 250 years for helping deaf
children to communicate all previous
studies had been on implants for one
year so in 1989 her team at the
University of Melbourne began Studies on
people having cochlear implants in both
ears to see if it would benefit sound
localization and hearing a noise today
bilateral implants are very common for
people diagnosed as profoundly deaf
professor Clark and professor Dale thank
you very much thank you thank you
