Hospital To Perform First Live-Tweeted/Instagrammed Hearing Restoration Surgery

From: Forbes - Oct 1, 2012

Alex Knapp, Forbes Staff

Starting tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Pacific Time, Dr. Douglas Backous will be performing a cochlear implant surgery at the Swedish Medical Center in Seattle. As the surgery is being performed, it will be narrated on Twitter and photos of the surgery will be updated on Instagram. Dr. Backous is the Medical Director of the Center for Hearing and Skull Base Surgery at Swedish.

This live-tweeted surgery is part of a broader campaign by the hospital to build more awareness of cochlear implant surgeries, which can significantly improve and restore hearing – even for people who were born deaf.

“The whole reason for this social media campaign is to make people aware of treatments for hearing loss,” Dr. Backous told me. “About 87% of the population that could be treated doesn’t know about this option. As the Gen Yer’s look to have kids who could be helped by this, or will soon take care of their parents, who could also benefit, we want to engage with them on their own terms.”

Dr. Backous has been performing cochlear implant surgeries since 1993, and has performed about 700 of them. As he performed the operation tomorrow, new tweets and photos will be coming every few minutes. The photos will even include microscopic photos of the implantation. The bottom line for him, though, is hopefully reaching out to people about the treatments available to them and changing their lives.

“This gives people who are deaf or hard of hearing the chance to hear again – or even for the first time. Yes, some people whowere born deaf want to stay that way because of their culture. We respect that,” he told me. “But for those who don’t, this will actually take them from a deaf state to hearing state. I’ve seen people able to listen to music, stop needing to sign, and stop watching closed captions on their TV. It’s incredible overall.

You can follow along tomorrow morning at their twitter feed, @Swedish and the photos will be shared with hashtag #SwedishHear. While you wait, you can check out a video of Dr. Backous talking about hearing restoration here:

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