Cochlear Implant Clinic
About the clinic
The Melbourne Cochlear Implant Clinic was first established in 1982 by the University of Melbourne and the Royal Victorian Eye & Ear Hospital. The clinic is located on the 6th floor of the Smorgon Family Wing at the Royal Victorian Eye & Ear Hospital in East Melbourne.
Since the early 1980’s, well over 1,500 severe and profound hearing-impaired adults and children have received a cochlear implant through our clinic.
The clinic comprises of a team of internationally recognized audiologists, speech pathologists and ENT surgeons who provide options for hearing impaired people to improve their hearing. For some people this will include the fitting of a cochlear implant..
Every year, the Cochlear Implant Clinic helps in excess of 200 hearing impaired adults, children and their families gain improved access to sound; some people hearing sounds for the very first time. A cochlear implant can help people of all ages; our youngest recipient being 6 months old and our oldest, 91 years.
The clinic at the Royal Victorian Eye & Ear Hospital has a strong relationship with numerous multi-disciplinary groups throughout the country, including early intervention services, parent support groups, primary and secondary schools and is considered one of the most prestigious cochlear implant clinics in the world.
See our Cochlear Implant Programme [PDF 540KB] for more details.
Our History
Professor Graeme Clark, the founding chair of the Dept of Otolaryngology at the University of Melbourne, pioneered one of the first multi channel cochlear implant devices in the world and developed the technology over a 30 year period. The Melbourne Cochlear Implant Clinic was one of the first clinics worldwide to test multichannel implants on children and is internationally recognized for its clinical programmes, research and training courses.
Currently, over 120,000 people in 80 countries have benefited from the technology developed by Professor Clark and around 70 per cent of operations worldwide use this Australian implant.
Research at the University of Melbourne in conjunction with the Royal Victorian Eye & Ear Hospital, Cochlear Limited, the HEARing CRC and other implant clinics around Australia, has ensured that the Australian-designed cochlear implant has remained a world leader in bionic hearing technology.
Cochlear implant recipients receive significant improvement in sound awareness and communication as a result of the dedication of these teams which continue in their efforts to further develop the technology.
