"For patients whose hearing is considered too good for traditional cochlear implants but whose hearing loss is too advanced to benefit from hearing aids there hasnt been a device to meet their needs. But a hearing implant system that just received FDA approval will now meet that previously unmet need and benefit those patients according to Harold C. Pillsbury MD chair of the Department of OtolaryngologyHead and Neck Surgery at the UNC School of Medicine. SYNCHRONY EAS Electric Acoustic Stimulation Hearing Implant System which is manufactured by Durhambased MEDEL Corporation received FDA approval on September . UNC participated in the EAS System clinical trials and implanted the device in more patients than any other hearing center that participated. Our clinical trial participants were overwhelmingly receptive to this new technology Pillsbury said. The technology is remarkable and so were the results. The implant relies on two auditory technologies  the SYNCHRONY cochlear implant that stimulates the auditory nerve for highfrequency hearing loss and the EAS audio processor which has a builtin acoustic amplification for lowfrequency hearing loss. The SYNCHRONY EAS implant best assists people whose hearing loss is referred to as skislope hearing loss based on the steeply sloping image that appears on an audiogram when a patient has more trouble hearing higherfrequency sounds. Using traditional hearing aids those patients often have difficulty understanding speech above the din of background noise. Ninetyseven percent of patients participating in the MEDEL EAS clinical trial reported a benefit from EAS within the first year. Ninetytwo percent of participants reported an improvement in their ability to hear even among background noise one of the most challenging listening environments for people with hearing loss. And  percent reported satisfaction with the device overall. On average patients performed more than twice as well on tests of speech understanding with EAS than they did with their hearing aids preoperatively which speaks to the benefits of this technology Pillsbury said. The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders estimates that  million Americans between the ages of  and  have highfrequency hearing loss. While  percent of adults aged  to  have disabling hearing loss the rate increases to . percent for adults aged  to . Nearly  percent of those ages  to  and  percent of those who are  and older have disabling hearing loss. The EAS System FDA approval is for candidates who are  years old and older who have normal to moderate sensorineural hearing loss in the low frequencies sloping to a severetoprofound hearing loss in the high frequencies. MEDEL expects that the SYNCHRONY EAS Hearing Implant System will be available in the coming months."