This application requests support for the 11th Symposium on Cochlear Implants in Children. The symposium will be held April 11-14, 2007, in Charlotte, North Carolina. This symposium has been held biannually since 1986. The meetings have focused on numerous pediatric cochlear implant topics that are of importance to surgeons, audiologists, speech-language pathologists, hearing scientists, engineers, and educators. This ongoing series of symposia affords a valuable mechanism to keep the field abreast of advances in research and technology, and provides perspectives from a wide range of relevant fields. The symposium will be sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and will highlight a number of topic areas that are of current importance to pediatric implantation. Areas of focus will include: 1) cochlear implantation for the very young child; 2) surgical, habilitation and candidacy issues related to auditory neuropathy; and 3) issues that are related to bilateral cochlear implantation and the provision of binaural hearing cues to deaf children. These areas of focus will be explored in the morning sessions via thirteen invited presentations, contributed talks from the scientific community, panel discussions, and audience participation. In addition to these focus areas, a range of other topical pediatric cochlear implantation issues will be examined in afternoon contributed oral and poster sessions. Based upon recent symposia in this series, submission of approximately 250 poster presentations and 75 oral presentations is expected. Pediatric cochlear implantation is greatly benefiting the life possibilities and expectations of children with profound hearing losses; however, we are still far from realizing all of the potential benefits of this approach to the treatment of childhood deafness. Continued progress hinges upon continued interaction and exchange of ideas among surgeons, hearing scientists, engineers, audiologists, speech/language pathologists, and educators. The purpose of this symposium is to continue this necessary and productive interaction. ? ? ?
