"This is a surgery that's performed under general anesthesia, so you're asleep. The entire process is about one and a half hours to two hours depending on the anesthesia time. And what happens when you're asleep is we shave a little bit of hair around the ear. We make an incision, that's sort of S-shaped behind the ear. And then we get to this bone that you can feel behind your ear, which is called the mastoid. We go through the mastoid bone and we find a nerve called the facial nerve. It's an extremely important nerve because it controls movement to your face. We put a monitor on the nerve to keep it safe. We go in front of the nerve to find the middle ear and then the inner ear, which is known as the cochlea. We make about a one millimeter opening into the cochlea. And then we thread very gently this electrode into the cochlea so that it can rest inside the inner ear. We then put the device under the skin, close the skin up and wake you up from anesthesia."
— Charles Limb, MD, ENT surgeon
