The surgery is done under general anesthesia in Mayo Clinic's Outpatient Surgery Center. It takes about three hours to complete. The surgeon makes an incision behind the ear and forms a slight depression in the mastoid bone to accept the internal component. A small hole is made into the cochlea, and the electrode array of the internal component is threaded into the cochlea. The incision is closed so that the component is totally beneath the skin.
Patients usually go home the same day.
The incision closures are removed in about one week, and patients usually return to normal activities then. It usually takes four to six weeks for the incision to completely heal and for swelling to go down enough for the external equipment to be fitted. The implanted ear has no hearing ability until the external equipment is fitted four to six weeks after surgery. After the incision has healed and the swelling is gone, the audiologist at Mayo Clinic fits the external equipment. The speech processor is programmed with the help of the patient to set the softest sound and the loudest comfortable sound.