And the event is over!  I should have done a proper wrap up yesterday, so here it the summary:

On Saturday, 7/23/11, Med-El hosted a HearLIFE Expo at the Marriott in Overland Park, KS, with 3 speakers, a couple of Cochlear Implant audiology and surgery exhibitors, and a few event promoters.  Approximately 20 people attended, and the event was captioned as well as the room was looped; attendees who had t-coils in their cochlear implant(s) or hearing aid(s)  could activate the t-coil and eliminate all environmental sounds and focus solely on the speaker with the microphone.

The event lasted about an hour and a half and the 3 speakers were interesting and engaging.  They touched on a variety of hearing related issues, then drilled down into why choosing Med-El as the cochlear implant of choice was important.

After the event, I spoke with the outreach manager, Christine Pett, about her son and about her experiences growing up with a child who has hearing loss.  I’ll have a follow up article on that within the week.  She is greatly interested in speaking directly with our group so we’ll plan to have her come out to Kansas City sometime in 2012.  She mentioned that there were things potentially completing FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) approval that she’ll be able to announce next year.  She is based in St. Louis, MO and can be reached at christine.pett@medel.com if you have any questions.

I also talked with surgeons from both the University of Kansas Hospital and Midwest Ear Institute, Dr. Staecker and Dr. Cullen, respectively.  Both are experienced surgeons, and I wanted to follow up on some research that Dr. Staecker was doing that he talked about at the HLAA conference in 2009.  His research involves regeneration of certain parts of the inner ear and he may be getting close to FDA approved trials.  That sounds very exciting and I know a number of our members have asked about regeneration and things involving genetics and stem cells, so I thing having Dr. Staecker give a presentation would be very beneficial to our chapter.

That’s it from this event – if you want a recap of all the micro-blogging done during the event, I’ve linked them all below!

https://hlaakc.com/2011/07/23/hearlife-expo/

https://hlaakc.com/2011/07/23/hearlife-blogging/

https://hlaakc.com/2011/07/23/speakers/

https://hlaakc.com/2011/07/23/hearlife-implantable-hearing-technology/

https://hlaakc.com/2011/07/23/hearlife-expo-hearing-loss-and-cochlear-implants/

https://hlaakc.com/2011/07/23/hearlife-expo-what-is-a-cochlear-implant/

https://hlaakc.com/2011/07/23/hearlife-expo-cochlear-implant-criteria/

https://hlaakc.com/2011/07/23/hearlife-expo-what-to-expect-during-ci-surgery/

https://hlaakc.com/2011/07/23/hearlife-expo-ci-benefits/

https://hlaakc.com/2011/07/23/hearlife-expo-and-guest-speaker/

https://hlaakc.com/2011/07/23/hearlife-and-med-el/