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Some patients who develop bilateral Meniere's disease with significant hearing loss may be candidates for cochlear implantation. A cochlear implant is a small, electronic device that helps a person with severe hearing impairment achieve a sense of sound. It does not restore hearing, rather it gives the person a good representation of sounds in the environment and helps them understand speech. For this reason, patients must carefully consider the type of surgery they undergo for vertigo in unilateral Meniere's in order to make sure that it does not preclude them later from undergoing a cochlear implant if their Meniere's disease eventually affects the other ear as well.

The cochlear implant consists of four components:

• Microphone to pick up sounds in the environment
• Speech processor to arrange those sounds
• Transmitter and receiver which picks up the sounds from the speech processor and converts them into electrical impulses
• Group of electrodes (called an array) that sends the impulses from the receiver to different regions of the auditory nerve

To learn more about cochlear implants, please click on the following links: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=12806291&ordinalpos=13&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.PubmedResultsPanel.PubmedRVDocSum