Question: Will there eventually be a surgery to repair sensory hearing loss?
Answer: Experiments have been done on the inner ear tissue of mice that had damaged hair cells, and with treatment, they were able to be repaired. But hair cells play only one part in the process that converts sound to the brain. The hairs are part of the cell needed for hearing and not the whole cell. The complexity of these tissues makes hair cell regeneration a challenge, but researchers are steadily progressing. These results are still encouraging in that a surgery for hearing loss may one day be forthcoming. Some believe that it’s not a matter of if they will be able to repair hearing, but rather when they will be able to do it.