A woman in Sacramento chose to have only local anesthesia for the procedure
NEED TO KNOW
- A woman in Sacramento chose to stay awake during cochlear implant surgery to avoid anesthesia effects due to Type 1 diabetes
- The procedure was performed only with local anesthesia around the ear in one of the first instances of its kind
- The woman, Patty Peasley, recounted the experience to a local news outlet
“It was like going to the dentist.”
This is how a woman in Sacramento who chose to stay awake during her cochlear implant surgery — one of the first few known instances of such a procedure — described her experience with the atypical approach to the procedure to CBS News.
Suffering from moderate to severe hearing loss, Patty Peasley decided to pursue a cochlear implant — a “small, complex electronic device that can help to provide a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf or severely hard-of-hearing,” according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD). The implants bypass damaged portions of the ear and directly stimulate the auditory nerve…