Research Helping People With Balance and Vision Problems

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have completed tests in animals of an electrical device that can at least partially restore an impaired sense of balance and improve blurred vision.

Human testing is years away yet, but the scientists claim that this type of device, when partially implanted in the inner ear, has the possibility of helping the estimated 30,000 Americans who have profound loss of balance because of inner ear problems. These patients not only can suffer from bad balance, but blurry vision as well.

There are many reasons for a person to have this type of balance problem including an inherited defect, it can come from the use of antibiotics, from chemotherapy, Meniere's Disease, from viral infection or from stroke or any type of head trauma.

The researchers used chinchillas for the study because they have been used before and their ear function has been studied in the past.

The device is about the size of a matchbox, weighs about three ounces and what it does is copy the way the three semicircular canals in the inner ear work by sensing the way the patients head is rotating and then transmitting that information to the brain. The semicircular canals of these patients have been damaged and they cannot tell the brain the way the head is moving and the patient has no reference point to be able to maintain balance.

They have been testing the device for more than a year. It is made up of a battery-operated box that is mounted on the head. The box contains sensors which are positioned parallel to the patients semicircular canals. This is the part of the ear that normally senses head movement. These sensors are connected to a microprocessor and then to electrodes that have been surgically implanted in the inner ear and connected to nerve endings. The electrical impulses tell the brain which way the head is rotating.

It sounds very involved and complicated, but for someone who is off balance constantly and who has vision that is so blurry that everything looks like a blurry motion picture, this device can be a God send.