Deaf Children Can Attend Regular Classes   
Deaf children who have cochlear implant surgery before they are four years old, and who receive four years of special training after surgery, can attend regular school classes with relatively few problems, according to a Johns Hopkins University study. About one in every 1,000 babies born in the U.S. suffers from profound hearing loss.

Dr. John K. Niparko followed 35 children who had cochlear implants at Johns Hopkins. About 80 percent of them successfully moved out of special schools for the deaf and into local neighborhood schools after four years of training. The 20 percent who failed to progress into regular schools had the surgery when they were older than four.

Cochlear implants are electronic systems that send sound-generated impulses directly to the brain, bypassing a flawed part of the inner ear. With training, such as the kind the children in the study received, patients learn to interpret those signals.