Piezoelectric Bone Conduction Hearing Implants (BCI)

Piezoelectric Bone Conduction Hearing Implants (BCI)

The ENT department at Command Hospital (Southern Command) in Pune has successfully conducted the first piezoelectric Bone Conduction Hearing Implants (BCI), marking a significant milestone in government hospital healthcare in India.

About Piezoelectric Bone Conduction Hearing Implants (BCI)

• The active piezoelectric BCI system is an implantable medical electronic device designed for hearing-impaired patients, including those with conductive loss (including aural atresia), mixed hearing loss, and single-sided deafness.

About Piezoelectricity:

• Piezoelectricity refers to the electric charge that accumulates in certain solid materials, such as crystals, certain ceramics, and biological substances like bone, DNA, and various proteins, when subjected to mechanical stress.
• The word piezoelectricity means electricity resulting from pressure and latent heat.
• The word comes from the Greek words for “press” and “amber“, which has historically been used as a source of electricity.
• One of the unique characteristics of the piezoelectric effect is that it is reversible, meaning that materials exhibiting the direct piezoelectric effect (generating electricity under stress) also exhibit the converse piezoelectric effect (generating stress under an electric field).
• When piezoelectric material is placed under mechanical stress, a shifting of the positive and negative charge centers in the material takes place, which then results in an external electrical field.
  • When reversed, an outer electrical field either stretches or compresses the piezoelectric material.
• Piezoelectricity finds applications in various fields such as microphones, sensors, and piezoelectric motors.

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