Cochlear Implants and MUSIC : The case of Zbigniew Dadela
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Cochlear implantation: right ear 23.11.2005
‘My neighbours have no complaints about my music’
Zbigniew has loved music since he was a child. He started learning to play an instrument in primary school. Then he continued education under the tutelage of a bandmaster, playing trumpet in a factory orchestra.
In 1982, he started to loose hearing due to medical complications. Hearing loss was progressing until 3 years later he became totally deaf in both ears. After 20 years of deafness, in 2005, he received a C40+ implant in a right ear with a Tempo+ processor. It was his chance to return to the world of sounds. His love for music rewoke and once again he wanted to play some instrument. In 2007 he started to teach himself to play an accordion. His earlier musical experience with music and knowledge of sheet music were very helpful.
In following years he was able to get more and more satisfaction with sounds and his musical passion progressed. He modestly says that he will never become a virtuoso, but plays for his own enjoyment and, what is most important, can do what he really loves. Today, Zbigniew uses an Opus2 processor and in spite of a 20-year long bilateral deafness he has good benefits in terms of speech comprehension. In a monosyllabic word test he scores about 80% in silence and 70% in noise. 
Author: Tomasz Wiśniewski, World Hearing Center, Institute of Physiology and Pathology of Hearing, Warsaw/Kajetany, Poland