Michal Luntz

Michal Luntz (born 1955) is an Israeli ear and Cochlear implantsurgeon (Otologist), medical researcher, and hearing advocate. She is a co-founder (2009) and Director of the Ear and Hearing Center at the A.R.M Otolaryngology Head and Neck and Maxillofacial Surgery Center at Assuta Medical Center in Tel Aviv. She is responsible for establishing the Israeli criteria for cochlear implantation in adults, allowing many individuals with moderate to profound hearing loss to receive implants. In 2003, she became the first cochlear implant surgeon to receive a cochlear implant and is currently a bilateral CI recipient. Between 1997 and 2018 she was Chair of the ENT Department at Bnai Zion Medical Center at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology|Technion―Israel Institute of Technology, and between 2008 and 2019 she served as Head of the ENT Faculty at the Technion’s Medical School. Since 2019 she has been President of the Israeli Society for Auditory Research
== Education and Career ==
Luntz graduated summa cum laude from the Sackler School of Medicine at Tel Aviv University. Following her residency she divided her position between doing clinical work in the Department of Otolaryngology at Sheba Medical Center and doing research in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Tel Aviv University, where her studies focused on histology and the aeration function of the middle ear and the Eustachian tube. She then accepted a two-year fellowship in Otology at the University of Miami’s Ear Institute. 
In 1997 Luntz was appointed Director of the ENT Department at Bnai Zion Medical Center at the Technion―Israeli Institute of Technology in Haifa, where she founded the Ear and Hearing Program and the cochlear implantation service. In Haifa, she taught at the Technion’s medical school and in the Department of Communication Disorders at the University in Haifa. She also serves as a mentor for MD, Msc, and Ph.D. students at both institutions. In 2009, along with Dr. Roi Landsberg and Dr. Avi Chefetz, she founded A.R.M., a center dedicated to ENT surgery. In 2009, she established a formal two-year fellowship in ear and cochlear implant surgery there. 
Luntz’s practice as an ear and cochlear implant surgeon is located in both Tel Aviv and Haifa, Israel. She has gained worldwide recognition for her research on middle ear physiology and diseases in children and adults, surgical imaging of the anatomy of the ear, and cochlear implantation, as well as for her hearing advocacy, which focuses on creating clear communication between ear surgeons and other hearing professionals, mainly audiologists and teachers of the deaf. Most notably, she led the initiative for full reimbursement for cochlear implantation in adults in Israel, which was approved by the Israeli Ministry of Health in 2006. Since then, every adult in Israel who suffers from a significant hearing loss, who cannot understand speech using hearing aids alone, and who can benefit from a cochlear implant, can receive an implant. 
== Hearing and Bilateral Implant Advocacy ==
Her clinical practice and research focus on middle ear diseases, middle ear aeration, cochlear implantation, and hearing restoration solutions. She has performed over 1500 cochlear implantations. 
Luntz established the Israeli criteria for cochlear implantation in adults (2006), allowing many individuals with moderate to profound hearing loss to be implanted before it was too late for implantation to be a treatment option. In March 2018, Luntz joined the Board of Directors of Bekol, an Israeli organization for the hearing impaired; whose mission is to advocate and educate hearing-impaired individuals to realize their Right To Hear, and to help authorities understand the significance of the loss to society caused by denying hearing-impaired individuals.
== Hearing Loss and Cochlear Implantation ==
Luntz is a long-time advocate of bilateral implants. She received a CI while still having significant residual hearing in the non-implanted ear, eventually becoming one of the first well-functioning bimodal hearing users in the world. Years later, after a loss of hearing in her functioning ear, she received another cochlear implantation, becoming a bilateral implant.